The storm had died away at last, leaving a terrible peace behind it. The colour of the evening sky was sard-green, than which nothing can be more despairing.

Mrs. Portal sat with her head drooped forward a little as if very tired, and Poppy arose from her seat, pushed open a window, and stood looking out. The smell of wet steaming earth came into the room. Presently, speaking very softly, she continued her narrative:

"I wanted all the money I could get for my son. He had no name, no heritage ... his father ... had, I believed, married another woman. I was resolved that he should at least have all money could give him.... I thought that when he grew up he would turn from me in any case as a woman who had shamed him and robbed him of his birthright, so that it did not matter _what_ I did while he was yet young, and yet loved me, to insure him health, a fine education, and a future. First it was to give him the bare necessaries of life, later to provide a home in the country where he could grow up strong and well under good, kind care ...

then, my thoughts were for his future ... Oh! I hoped to redeem my soul by his future, Clem!... So I worked and lied ... and lied and took ...

and lied and saved ... not often with my lips did I lie, Clem ... but _always_ with my eyes. I had at last ama.s.sed nearly eight hundred pounds ... you will think that remarkable, if you will remember that always I ama.s.sed it virtuously ... that there is no man of all I met in those years who can call me anything but a good woman--abominably, disgustingly, vilely _good_.

"And then ... I was introduced to a financier, who, because of the charm of my innocent eyes, told me that, in a few weeks, he would transform my eight hundred pounds into eight thousand pounds. Incidentally, he remarked that we must see more of each other ... and I looked into _his_ eyes and saw that they were _not_ innocent,--and that there would be a difficult day of reckoning for me later on ... but for eight thousand pounds, and secure in mailed armour of _purity_, I risked that ...

especially as he was just leaving England for a few weeks ... I handed over my eight hundred pounds without a qualm, for he had a great name in the financial world. In less than three weeks his dead body was being hauled over the side of a yacht in the Adriatic, and my eight hundred pounds was deader than Dead-Sea fruit, for I never heard of it again ...

nor wanted to ... the need of it was gone ... my boy was dead!"

"Poppy! Poppy!" Clem got up and drew the girl down to the floor by her side. "Rest your head on me dear ... you are tired ... life has been too hard for you.

"'Dost thou know, O happy G.o.d!----'

"Life has been brutal to you. I think of my own sheltered childhood, and compare it with yours--flung out into the fiery sands of the desert to die or survive, as best you might!... The strange thing is that your face bears no sign of all the terrible things that have overtaken you! I see no base, vile marks anywhere on you, Poppy.... It cannot all be acting ... no one is clever enough to mask a soiled soul for ever, and from everyone, if it really _is_ soiled.... You _look_ good--not smirking, soft goodness that means nothing, but brave, strong goodness ... and I _know_ that that look is true ... and so I can love you, after all these things you have told me ... I can love you better than ever. But _why_ is it, Poppy?"

"I don't know. If it _is_ so, the reason must be that all was done for Love, Clem ... because always I had a sweet thing at my heart ... the love I bore to my child, and to the father of my child. Because, like the mother of Asa, 'I built an altar in a grove' and laid my soul upon it for Love. I want to tell you something further. Being _good_, as the world calls it, has no charm for me. Many of the men I have spoken of had a sinister attraction. _I understood what they felt._ I looked into eyes and saw things there that had answers deep down in me. I am a child of pa.s.sionate Africa, Clem ... the blood in my veins runs as hot and red as the colour of a poppy.... It is an awful thing to look into the eyes of a man you do not love and see pa.s.sion staring there--and feel it urging in your own veins, too. It is an awful thing to know what it is that he is silently demanding, and what that basely answers in your own nature.... Yet there are worse things than this knowledge. A worse thing, surely, would have been to have gone hurtling over the precipice with some Gadarene swine!... Clem, if I had been _really_ innocent those years, nothing could have saved me. I should have gone to the devil, as they call it, with some vile man I had no love for, just because I didn't know how to keep out of the traps laid for me by my own nature--and then I should have 'been at the devil' indeed! But I had bought knowledge with the price of my girlhood ... and I had mated with my own right man.... I had looked at life, if only for an hour, with love-anointed eyes ... and so, it came to pa.s.s that I had a memory to live for, and a child to fight for ... and courage to fight my greatest enemy--myself. I think no one who knew the workings of my heart would deny me courage, Clem."

"No, and it is a n.o.ble quality, child--the n.o.blest, I think, when it is used to fight one's own baser nature. That only would keep a woman beautiful ... it is to _that_ you owe your beauty, dear."

"Then it is to you I owe it to a great extent--for it was you who first put the creed into me of courage--and silence--and endurance. Do you remember the night you wished me good-bye over your gate, Clem?"

"I remember everything--but, dear, there is one thing that grieves and bewilders me--why, _why_ could you not have earned a clean, fine living with your pen ... where was your gift of writing?"

"It left me, Clem, when I tried to earn money with it. I could not write. I tried and tried. I sat to it until my eyes sank into my head and hollows came to my cheeks--until we were hungry, my little Pat and I--and cold. For bread and firing I had to leave it, and turn to other things. After the boy died ... it came back and mocked me. I wrote then to ease my pain ... and everything I have written since has been successful ... found a ready market and in some sort Fame ... but it was all too late!"

"Poor child! everything has mocked you!" Clem put her arms round the girl and kissed her tenderly; then drew away and a.s.sumed an ordinary pose, for a maid had come into the room bringing lights, and with the intimation that she was about to sound the dressing-bell, as it wanted only half an hour to dinner-time.

"Heavens!" cried Clem; "and I hear Billy's voice in the garden; Eve Carson's, too, I believe. _Fly_ to your room, Poppy. I expect Sarah has laid out one of your gowns."

CHAPTER XXVI

It was, indeed, Carson whom Portal had brought home with him. They had encountered in West Street, and Bill had insisted on bringing him back just as he was in the inevitable grey lounge suit, a.s.suring him that there would be no one to find fault with his appearance but Mrs. Portal, who was notoriously forgiving.

So Carson came, and had no faintest inkling that Poppy was there too.

Being an old _intime_ of the family, he knew his way about the house and after leaving Portal's dressing-room, he sought the nursery, was admitted by Cinthie's nurse, and stayed talking and romping with the child long after the second bell had sounded and dinner been announced, with the result that Portal insisted on taking Poppy into dinner, while Clem sought the recalcitrant in the nursery. Later, they came laughing to the dining-room, and for the first time Carson knew of Poppy's presence. She was sitting facing the door, and a big silver candlestick, with wide branching antlers, framed her in a silver frame. With her mysterious, tendrilly hair, her subtle scarlet mouth and Celtic cheek-bones, she had the alluring appearance of a Beardsley-drawing without any of its bloodlessness, for her gown was as scarlet as the poppies of the field, and she glowed with inward fires at seeing Carson.

The deep, sweet glance she gave him as they greeted made him glow too, with gladness of living, and some other radiant reason that for the moment was not clear to him. He only knew that weariness was gone from his veins and that the splendour of life had come back at last with the rush and swell of full-tide.

After dinner they all went into the verandah and the men smoked there.

Clem never smoked, but she liked the smell of cigars. Poppy had long broken herself of the cigarette habit. Later, Portal said he must go and write two important letters to catch the mail--after that they would have a game of Bridge if anyone liked. Clem said she would go and play to the others her setting to "In Exile," of which she was very proud.

She sang it softly over and over to them for a while. Afterwards she wandered through Chopin's "Prelude" into Schubert's gentle "Andante."

Then unaccountably she began to fling out into the night the great solemn chords of a Funeral March. It was a wonderful thing, full of the dignity of sorrow, underlaid by thin wailings that spoke of little memories of all the past sweetnesses of the dead. There was a place in it that made Poppy think her dead child's arms were round her neck, and another where Carson thought of Alan Wilson and his thirty-one brave companions lying under the stars up in lonely Zimbabwe. At another time, he remembered a man dear to him, killed at Gwelo in the second native rising; he seemed to see the fellow with his hands in his pockets whistling to his dogs in a peculiar way he had.

Through all the playing Poppy and he sat in the verandah, side by side, in two low canvas chairs. A fold of her gown lay across his feet. They were absolutely silent and they did not look at each other. Carson was staring straight before him, but without a turn of his head or flicker of his eyelids he was conscious of every tiniest detail of the woman by his side. He saw the gracious line of her cheek and throat and thigh and foot; but, more than that, he believed he saw the spirit of her too, gentle and sad, but brave and desirable to him beyond the soul of any woman--_and his_. She was his. He was certain of that now. He had taken the knowledge from her eyes when they met that night; and yet it seemed old knowledge to him, something he had known since the beginning of time.

Her hand lay within reach of his, but he did not touch it. Only too conscious of the mysterious magnetism of the flesh, he strove with all the fine instincts and high aspirations his spirit had ever given birth to and his body honoured, to free himself from the shackles of the flesh and give to this woman whom he loved and blessed a greater salute than the mere touching of hands.

As for her--her eyes were closed. She, too, was reaching out with spirit-hands to him. Inasmuch as human souls which are aloof and lonely things can communicate--theirs met and hailed each other as mate until the end of time.

Suddenly Clem freed them of sorrow. She began to play something that was like an old piece of brocade all flowered over quaintly with tiny leaves, true lovers' knots, and little pink-and-blue rose-buds.

Presently the brocade became a stately dress, worn with powder and patches and high scarlet-heeled shoes.... Portal, having finished his mail, came back to the verandah, and Clem closed the piano then and came out too. They sat and talked, and no one again suggested cards.

The night was fresh and sweet after the rain, and the sky above alive with newly-washed stars. Far away, Durban flashed and sparkled, and just above the bay there was a great splash of vermilion against the darkness of the bluff--sometimes it showed streaks of carmine in it. They discussed the phenomenon, and eventually concluded that a boat out on the water was afire. Whatever the cause, it certainly gave the finishing touch to the picturesque beauty of the night.

A little after eleven Carson left. He shook hands with everyone at parting, and for a brief instant he and Poppy drank another deep draught of joy from each other's eyes.

No sooner had he gone than Clem said:

"Poppy, you are to go to bed instantly, and stay there until I give you leave to get up. You look like a spectre."

Poppy took her hand and kissed it. She was trembling with happiness, but she dared not speak of it. Clem put an arm round her.

"I must come and see if your room is all right."

"Yes, but who are these midnight vigilantes in the garden?" exclaimed Portal. "I believe I hear Bramham!"

Bramham, indeed, it was who came into the light with a crumpled and weeping woman clinging to his arm.

"What the----?" softly demanded Portal of Heaven, and Clem stared. Poppy swiftly recognised Miss Allendner.

"What is it?" she cried, stepping forward.

Miss Allendner only wept more violently.

"This poor lady has been greatly upset," said Bramham, and placed her in a chair. Then he spoke with the brevity of a good man with a bad tale:

"Miss Chard's house has been burnt to the ground; fortunately no one is hurt, but everything is destroyed."

"Burnt! _burnt?_... _everything?_ My work ... my freedom--" cried Poppy wildly with clasped hands.

"Everything! Nothing left but a few bricks and some melted iron. I wonder you didn't see the flare-up--it lighted the whole bay. The thing was discovered too late to do anything but get Miss Allendner out." His firm brevity left him. "Oh, Lord, I _am_ sorry!" He stared dismally.

"Oh, Poppy!" cried Clem, with pitiful voice, and they all drew round the pale girl. She did not speak for a time--just stood there in the light streaming from the drawing-room windows, white and still; and presently some tears fell down her face. Then she said:

"Poor Miss Allendner. Shall we put her to bed, in my bedroom, Clem? She is worn out!"

The women went away. At the gate Bramham said to Portal:

"And there is worse to come.... That crazy Allendner turkey was shrieking round the fire like a lunatic ... imploring the crowd to save the writings of _Eve Destiny_, the South African writer--everybody knows who she is now ... the place is humming like a beehive with the news ...

and it will be in all the news-rags in the morning.... She'll be more broken up over that than anything ... for reasons of her own she didn't want it known.... Oh, it's a h.e.l.l of a country, Portal."

This thing was news also to Portal. Mrs Portal being that lovely thing, a close woman, he knew nothing of Poppy's ident.i.ty with _Eve Destiny_.