Later, she heard the gates clang and the rickshaw bell begin to tinkle down the long hill. Then she broke into dry sobbing, clutching at her throat with both hands, like one suffocating. At last some wild words burst from her lips.

"Oh, I could kill myself to-night!... but first I will kill that woman Loraine!"

CHAPTER VII

A storm shook the house next day when Luce Abinger returned. Kykie's shrill crescendo, expostulations and denials, were smothered like little frothy waves in the breakers of her master's wrath. Once the words "key"

and "gate" came floating up the staircase and reached Poppy where she lay on her pillows, as she had lain until dawn, staring at the walls and the ceiling with dry eyes, and her pale lips took a wry and bitter curve. Later, pandemonium was extended to the yard and stables; then, after all these voices there was peace.

Behind her locked door Poppy was vaguely thankful for safety from Abinger's fury and tyrannical questioning; and not all Kykie's cajoleries and threats could make her emerge.

"Go away, Kykie. I'm not well. I want nothing," she repeated monotonously to all demands, until at last Kykie, from sheer weariness, obeyed.

The strange emotions and events of the past night had left the girl numb. The ecstasy of hatred which had possessed her for that other woman, the birth-pains her heart had suffered, the anguish of humiliation and defeat had all pa.s.sed. She felt nothing. She thought of nothing. Only sometimes as she lay there staring at _Monna Lisa_ on the wall, she had the fancy that she was a little wrecked boat, lying broken and useless on a beach where of late had raged a cruel storm.

In the torrid afternoon hours she slept a while--dead, dreamless sleep, that revived her into at least some mechanical resemblance of herself; so that when Kykie once more pounded upon her door and demanded admittance with a tea-tray, she arose and let the anxious fl.u.s.tered creature in.

"For goodness' gracious, and what do you look like, Poppy!"

"Kykie, stop asking questions, or go!" was the answer given so fiercely that the old woman thought it wiser to say no more on the subject. She inveigled Poppy to sit down and take some tea and some delicately prepared sandwiches; in the meantime, she unfolded the tale of her woes to the girl's unhearing ears. Luce had beaten her best kitchen _boy_, and he had run away, so that she had been obliged to do all his work as well as her own. Every dish at luncheon time had been sent out untasted, and nothing eaten but bread and cheese--a terrible insult to poor Kykie!

"And he's been prowling round the house like a lion all the afternoon, wanting to know what's the matter with you. Promise to come down to dinner, Poppy, or in the name of gracious me I don't know what I shall do."

"I'll come down, Kykie," said Poppy dully. "What is all the trouble about?"

"Just because the front gate was left unlocked all the time he was away.

Of course, we little knew that it was open. But he said that I or the _boys_ ought to have found out and looked for the key in his room and locked it. _Me!_ Me that is on my weary feet in that kitchen all day thinking of his stomach--heavenly me! Take some more tea, my poor child; you look like a spook."

"No, I have had enough, Kykie. Go away now, and see about your dinner.

I'll be down."

"Let me brush your hair first; you know you always like me to when you feel bad." The old woman took up Poppy's hair-brushes and approached the long ruffled plaits of hair; but the moment she touched them the girl sprang away from her like a white flame.

"No, no, Kykie; never dare touch my hair again!" she cried violently.

"In the name of--!" Words failed the indignant Kykie. She grabbed her tea-tray and floundered from the room.

At dinner-time, white and fateful as a narcissus with a broken stalk, the girl faced Abinger's curious eyes across the table. But there was more than curiosity in his glance as it swept over her. The same peculiar quality was in it that had troubled her at their last dining together. Only now she did not notice it. If she could have given her thoughts to anything at all but weariness and despair, she might have wondered to see his very real concern at her appearance.

"Why, what have you been doing to yourself?" he said. "You look half dead. Here, drink this wine at once." He poured out a gla.s.s of champagne for her, and would eat nothing himself until she had partaken of one of the _hors-d'oeuvre_. And when the soup appeared, he waved hers away and ordered an _entree_ to be brought at once. The wine flew into Poppy's cheeks and sent a little scarlet to her lips. She felt a warmth stealing into her being that had been sadly absent since the past midnight. Presently she smiled a little wan smile across at him.

"Oh, I'm all right, Luce! Only I didn't sleep much last night ... the heat----"

"We'll get out of this infernal place--" he began.

"Oh, no, no!" she cried violently, then pulled herself together and added more calmly: "I like the place, Luce--and the garden ... is so lovely ... I should hate to go away."

He was curiously amenable.

"Very well, we'll stay if you say so. And I've been thinking over what you asked the other day, Poppy ... we'll change things. You could go out if you want to ... we must talk about it ... I want to talk ..." he halted a little in his speech--"to you."

"I'm not keen about it any longer, Luce. I don't want to know people, after all. I think I'll shut myself up and work for ten hours every day.

I mean to write. I will write a wonderful book. Surely people who work hard are happy in a way, aren't they, Luce?" Her voice and her eyes were wistful. "One would never want anything else--after a time--but to go on writing wonderful stories of life, would one?"

He smiled grimly. She thought he was going to hurl a barb at her, but he only said with the same unusual gentleness:

"Work will never fill _your_ life, Poppy. You are the kind of girl who will live the wonderful stories that the other women write."

The lilac eyes in the _troublante_ face opposite gave a sad long look into his; then fell. She shivered a little.

"Some wonderful stories are terrible, Luce," she said in a low voice.

When she rose from the table, he said:

"Come and smoke in the garden with me."

She turned her face away from him, staring vaguely at a picture on the wall.

"I don't care about the garden to-night, Luce. The drawing-room, if you like--but I am very tired."

"I shan't keep you long. There is something I want to say to you."

He followed the slim, upright figure walking with such weary grace and trailing her white chiffons behind her, to the drawing-room, where the lights were low, the windows open to the night scents, and the big chintz-covered chairs and sofas held out rose-clad arms to them. She went straight to one she knew well, and dropped into it, laying her cheek against the cool, shiny chintz. Close beside her was an open window, and Abinger came and stood in it, his face in profile to her, staring out into the darkness. His hands were clasped behind him tightly gripping a cigar which he had taken out but did not light. Poppy closed her eyes and the lids burned against them. She had a great longing to be alone with her thoughts. But Abinger had begun to speak.

"Now--about your going out, Poppy, and meeting people, and all that; my chief reason for being disturbed when you mentioned the thing the other day was that I was unprepared. I hadn't had time to think out what was the best plan for you--for us. Of course, you know--it was very well for you to travel all over the place as you have done as my sister; but the thing is, that it won't do here. I can't spring a sister on people who know that I haven't got one."

"No, I suppose not," said she vaguely, from the depths of her chair.

"You realise that then?" he went on evenly. "Well, you see, you rushed me before I had been able to decide what was best to do, and of course I got mad. I'm sorry, Poppy, I beg your pardon, I'm sure."

Poppy, dimly surprised at this unwonted penitence, would have murmured something, but he went on quickly:

"Had _you_ any plan? How did you think of accounting to people--women particularly--for the fact that you were living here alone with me?"

"Accounting to them?" she echoed faintly. "Will they ask me?"

"Well, not exactly you, but they'll ask anyone who can tell them, and expect a satisfactory answer before they take you to their b.r.e.a.s.t.s."

"But, Luce, you could tell them, or let it be known. I shouldn't mind ... _not_ how I first came to you, starving and ragged and beaten; I couldn't bear anyone knowing that ... but they could know how good you have been to me, bringing me up and educating me and being a guardian to me."

"And you think that would satisfy them?"

"I don't see why not. Of course, it is unconventional. But I believe it is not unheard of for a girl to have a guardian ... and guardians are not always old."

"That is so. Unfortunately, my dear girl, there is one thing you omit to take into consideration."