Poppy Part 25

In return, she loved all men, and was kind to all women, loving one steadfastly.

But now, half in pity, half for some reason she could not fathom, she found a place in her heart for Poppy Destin, too. She was touched by the girl's beauty, on which her seeing eyes saw the shadow of tragedy.

"_Quite_ a child!" was her thought. "Too young to have so much to hide behind those lovely eyes!" A line from Pater's monograph on _Monna Lisa_ came into her mind:

"Hers are the eyes that have looked on all the world; and the eyelids are a little weary."

She put out her hand to Poppy. If Poppy had eyes like _Monna Lisa_, she herself had the hands of that Mother of all saints and sinners--only a little browner.

"I would like to be your friend," she said quietly.

Poppy flushed, and then became pale. The hand Mrs. Portal touched stiffened a little, and the lilac eyes looked away at the sea rather than meet the kindness of the other's glance--but they were dim with tears. Mrs. Portal's warm, Irish heart felt a chill. She was a little sore too, for her friendship was more often sought than proffered, and never before had she known a repulse. She could not know that the girl before her felt honoured as never in her life before, and was filled with grat.i.tude and affection. But Clementine Portal was a creature full of intuition and understanding. Possibly some of the girl's feeling subtly communicated itself to her, for she became aware that the rebuff did not come of rudeness or indifference--or coldness of heart; but of some other strange feeling.

"Is it possible that she's afraid of me?" she thought at last. "Poor child! doesn't she know an enemy from a friend? It must be that she has found all women her enemies!"

They had been saying little ordinary things to one another in the meantime, while they gazed before them to where the risen sun was transforming the curved, purple waves into a sheet of dazzling copper.

Presently Clementine got up from the sands, very reluctantly.

"I must go home to breakfast, or my household will be searching for me,"

she said, with a mournful smile, shaking her skirt into shape. "Heaven meant me to roam the deserts and run in the woods; but Fate laid upon me the burden of respectability and planted me in the cabbage garden. I must run and catch a tram-car!"

Poppy laughed at her; but her laugh ended on a queer note.

"Being a wild a.s.s of the desert has its drawbacks, too!" said she, with something of bitterness.

Clementine put out her hand and touched the girl's. "Well, don't be a wild a.s.s any more. Come and see me. I hold agricultural shows on the first and last Fridays of the month, and you will find the best kinds of turnips and cabbages in my drawing-room. But if you seek me in love and charity as a friend _should_, come on Sundays. You never told me your name, yet, mermaid!"

Poppy held the brown, thin hand and answered firmly:

"Rosalind Chard."

But afterwards, when the other had gone a little way, she ran after her and caught her up and said:

"But I wish you would call me 'Poppy.'"

Nevertheless, it was not until a month later that she visited Mrs.

Portal. Strongly attracted by the kind, gay ways and looks of that fascinating woman, she yet feared to know her better. And she feared, too, that in the house of Mrs. Portal she might meet the man whom she knew not whether most she loved, or feared, or hated; for whose sake she gashed herself with the knives of defeat and despair. She knew that he belonged to Mrs. Portal's circle of friends, and she had heard from Sophie Cornell that the chief of these was Mrs. Cap.r.o.n. _Mrs. Cap.r.o.n!_ That was the name in which he had bidden her good-bye, speaking in his drunkenness or delirium, she knew not which. Mrs. Cap.r.o.n, the splendid, milky creature, who had been with him in the rickshaw, and whom Poppy had so clearly recognised! Would _she_, too, recognise Poppy? The girl was not so certain now of the improbability of such a thing, for of late it seemed to her that she had begun to present a singular resemblance to herself as she had looked in those unhappy, far-off days. The strain of suffering had told upon her terribly, and her face was tragically drawn, with a sharp, childish look of suffering about her mouth, and soft, though not unlovely hollows, in her cheeks. Her eyes looked larger and more unreal for the shadows beneath them.

The day she decided to go to Mrs. Portal's found her examining herself in her gla.s.s with apprehensive eyes, keen for every defect. She was a woman now, examining her weapons for battle, and her courage misgave her as she saw her reflection. She had put on a white gown that was all simple lines and soft laces, and she really looked very young and girlish, but she hated her appearance when she thought of those two charming-looking women of the world with their eloquent clothes. What if she should meet _him_ there and he should compare her with them? What if either the thin, vivacious, sunburnt woman, whom she herself could hardly help loving--or the regal-milky-woman of yellow chiffon should be that _Loraine_ whom he so loved?

"With either of them what chance should I stand?" she asked herself, desperate-eyed. "Why have I got these vile, purple shadows?--and holes in my cheeks? I never had them before!" She burst into tears, and at this juncture Kykie thought fit to make her entrance unannounced with her everlasting tea-tray.

"Now, Poppy, to goodness! what you ought to do is to take off that tight frock and put on a nice cool gown and rest," said the beldame importantly.

"You're mad, Kykie--and I wish you wouldn't come into my room without knocking." Poppy made occasion to fling a towel over her hat and gloves which lay on the bed, and which it was not desirable Kykie should see.

"Ah! you needn't mind old Kykie, darling," was the response; and Poppy, unused to such blandishments, stared at the yellow face which continued to waggle archly at her.

"What will Luce say when he comes back, if I haven't taken care of you?"

The girl suddenly sickened at her tone.

"How dare she speak to me like that!" was her furious thought. "As if Luce has any right over me or my health!" She could have struck the leering smile from the woman's face; she turned away trembling with anger to her dressing-table.

"So you knew all the time about Luce and me being married?" she said in a toneless voice, when she had presently mastered herself.

"Heavenly me! yes, and I knew it would all work out and come right in the end. But I think you ought to wear your wedding-ring now, Poppy....

All right, all right, you needn't look at me like a _mal-meit_!... I'm going now ... I wouldn't stop with you another minute when you look like that ... you and Luce are a nice pair for temper ... surely to goodness one would think all would be peace and love _now_--" The door was closed and locked on her and she was obliged to continue her soliloquy on the stairs.

An hour later found Poppy letting herself in at the double white gates of Mrs. Portal's garden. It was neither the first nor last Friday in the month, nor yet Sunday afternoon; but she had not come for society. She came because she must; because of her bitter need of some word concerning the man she loved.

The house was a big, red-brick villa, with many verandahs and no pretentious, except to comfort. An English maid, in a French cap and ap.r.o.n, showed her into a drawing-room that was full of the scent of flowers, with open windows and drawn shades. Almost immediately Mrs.

Portal blew into the room like a fresh wind, seized her hands, and shook them warmly.

"I knew you would come to-day," she said. "I dreamed of you last night.

Poppy, I have a feeling that you and I are going to be mixed up in each other's lives somehow."

A creature of moods and impulses herself, Poppy thoroughly understood this greeting, and it warmed her sad and lonely spirit gratefully; she let herself be beguiled to the fireside of Clementine Portal's friendship. Before she realised it, they were seated together in a deep lounge just big enough for two people, and a pile of cushions with cool, dull-toned surfaces, talking like friends of long standing. Mrs. Portal was quite in the dark as to who the girl was, but that did not bother her at all, and her remarks contained no shadow of a question. It was enough that she "had a feeling about her," and had dreamed of her and believed in her.

To ordinary persons these might not seem very cogent reasons; but Clementine Portal was in no sense ordinary. Her judgment concerning things in general, and women in particular, was both keen and sound; but she never allowed it to interfere with her inspirations, which she considered far safer. Apparently intensely practical and conventional, she was, in reality, a woman who lived the most important part of her life in a hidden world. She had the seeing-eye and the hearing-ear for things that went unnoted by the every-day man and woman. Being Irish, she was packed full of superst.i.tion, but, fortunately, a strong vein of common sense counterbalanced it. As for her humour, that most fatal gift in a woman, it sometimes resembled a fine blue flame, that scorched everything in reach; and sometimes, to the consternation of the conventional, was the rollicking wit of a fat and jolly Irish priest addicted to the punch-bowl. She had a wonderful way of attracting confidences from people about the things they most cared for in life. In a little while Poppy had told her what she had never told to a living soul before--about her little book of songs--and her great ambitions as a writer. For some unknown reason the girl felt these ambitions very much alive in her that afternoon. Clementine Portal sat like a creature entranced, with her lips slightly apart. When Poppy had given her, upon urgent requesting--a halting, eloquent outline of her novel, Clem said:

"I _know_ it will be good.... I can feel that it will have big bits of open s.p.a.ce like the veldt in it, with new sorts of trees growing by the wayside as one pa.s.ses along.... I hate the modern woman's book, because it always makes me gasp for air. It is too full of the fire that burns up all there is in life."

"You would write far better than I, probably," said the girl. "I know so little of life--only what I feel. You know everything----"

"Dear girl, you are better as you are. When you know everything, you will have discovered that the world is full of sawdust, and the people stuffed with shavings, and no one worth writing about--then, where will your fine books be?"

"Have you ever thought of writing?"

"Often," she began to laugh. "And when I discover a real good man in the world I shall burst into glory in a novel. But no such man exists. He died when the sons of G.o.d saw that the daughters of men were fair. Here is tea. We'll drown my pessimism in the cream-bowl, shall we?"

She went to the tea-table. The maid drew up the window-shades, letting the lovely rose-lights of late afternoon into the room. It was a real woman's room, full of flowers and photographs, and cushions, and piles of magazines and weeklies everywhere. There were no wonderful pictures on the walls, or valuable china in cases. Only a few well-arranged native curios, a good piano, and the kind of things people from home gather about them when they are sojourning in a foreign land. As Poppy followed to the tea-table, her eye caught a full-length photograph on the wall over the writing-desk, and she stayed a moment to look. It was a woman in her presentation gown--two long, lovely eyes smiled contentedly on the world. Underneath, in a woman's writing, were the words: "To Clem, from Mary."

It was the regal-milky-woman--Mrs. Cap.r.o.n. Mrs. Portal turned round from her tea-cups.

"Ah! everyone looks at that photograph! She is very beautiful. The remarkable thing is that she is good, too. That _is_ remarkable, isn't it? I'm sure if I had a face like that I should go to my own head and be a perfect divil."

"Who is she?" asked Poppy, still before the smiling picture.

"My friend, Mrs. Cap.r.o.n."

"Is that her name written there?"