As the days went by, writing became more and more impossible to Poppy. It had begun to be a weary grinding out of words, common-place, and uninspired. She came to hate the sight of her writing-table, because of the torment of disgust that seized her as she sat at it and read over such things as she had been able to write. And her longing to be out in the air became almost intolerable. She felt like a starved woman—starved for want of the wind and trees and flowers, anything that smelt of open free spaces such as she had known all her life until now.
And nothing happened to encourage her. She had no news of her Book of Poems, and when she called to see the publisher, he was never visible, and when she wrote she got no answer except that the reader for the firm had not been able to look through the book. Her story had not yet appeared in The Cornfield, and the one she had followed it up with came back, accompanied by a little printed paper, which read to the effect that the editor was at present "overstocked." Of course, this was a polite way of saying that the story wasn't up to the standard of the magazine. She burned with chagrin when she first read it. Afterwards, she became hardened to the daily sight of intimations of the kind, and to the sickening thud of returned manuscripts in the letter-box.
The day when she had no money in the world but the thirty shillings realised by the sale of her piece of Spanish lace, she left the baby with Mrs. Print and walked all the way to Hunter Street, on the forlorn hope that some editor might have addressed a letter to her there, enclosing a cheque. Miss Drake, the good-natured landlady, was alarmed to see her looking so ill.
"You are sitting to your desk too much, dear, and losing your beauty—and you know no girl can afford to do that until she has forty thousand in the bank," she said with a broad smile. "Why don't you chuck writing over and try the stage? A girl of your appearance could get into the Gaiety or Daly's any day, especially if you have any kind of a voice. The change of life and scene would do you a lot of good—and take it from me, dear, there's nothing so comforting in this world as a regular salary."
On top of the 'bus she was obliged from sheer weariness to take back to Westminster, Poppy turned the idea over in her mind. The stage had never had any attraction for her. Unlike most girls, she did not hold the belief that she had only to be seen and heard upon the boards to become famous. But she could not turn away from the thought of the change from sitting at her desk; and the regular salary had its potent charm, too—Miss Drake spoke like an oracle there!
However, she put the thought by for another day or two. She would give literature another chance, she said, with an ironical lip, and she essayed to finish her novel. For three days and the better part of three nights she hung over it in every moment she could spare from her child; at the end of that time she thrust the manuscript into the drawer of her table and locked it up.
"Lie there and wait for the inspired hour," she said. "I must look for other ways and means to boil the pot."
The wrench was to leave the "king's son" at home crooning in hired arms beneath the eye of Mrs. Print.
It did not take long to find out the whereabouts of theatrical agents and managers. She presented herself at the office of one of the best-known agents in London.