The room itself was terrible as an army with banners. It contained "gypsy-tables," antimacassars, "what-nots," plush fans upon the walls, indescribable villainies of wool and paper, a crewel-worked mantel-border, and every atrocity under the moon. In the midst of all was a good solid mahogany table, with a typewriting-machine on it, and seated before this was a girl. For pity of herself Poppy was glad to see another girl; and more especially a girl who, like herself, appeared to have reason to be bored with her surroundings and the general management of the universe. In the enthusiasm engendered by a fellow-feeling, she had an inclination to march in and take the girl to her heart, but after a further survey she changed her mind.
In a large, ripe fashion, the girl was very good-looking indeed, with a tall and generous figure of the kind that attracts prompt and frank attention from the generality of men, but is not deeply admired by other women. Her face was of a familiar Colonial type, large-featured but well-shaped, with big brown eyes, rather inclined to roll, suggestive of what is known as "a dash of colour"; a mouth of the kind that expresses nothing at all until the twenties, when by the aid of a retroussé nose, grown unaccountably coarse it suddenly expresses things which should be left unexpressed; a round, rather plump chin, and masses of dark hair which had been sadly maltreated by curling-irons, and had a dusty appearance. On the whole a handsome girl, probably good-natured enough for the ordinary purposes, and of a personality pleasing enough for an ordinary acquaintance.
Certainly not a girl to be made a friend of, thought Poppy, and decided that she would go no further.
"I'll wait and see first if Luce is going to let me out to meet nice people," she thought. "If he doesn't, this girl may help to pass away an idle hour sometimes, and she might serve as one of the characters in my novel. At any rate she could teach me to use the typewriter, and I could teach her not to live in a chamber of horrors."
With these reflections she stole back soft-footed in her tracks, and through her little exit-hole, which she covered up with the greatest care and skill, for fear that in the future it should prove to be her only mode of entrance into the world of men and women she longed to know.
For a whole week she refrained from broaching to the tyrant of the house the subject which lay uppermost in her thoughts. For one thing she thought it would be well to allow him to regain some semblance of good humour; for another she wished to give him full opportunity and time to make daily excursions into the town and lunch and dine with his friends, so that she might have some grounds for the reproaches she meant to level at him when she demanded freedom. In the meantime she was absorbed in affairs which included the inspection and re-arrangement of every room in the house, excepting only Abinger's, which she never ventured near. Touches of her personality soon lay upon everything, from the chintzes in the drawing-room which she had chosen herself at Waring's, and sent out to Kykie for the making, down to the curtaining of Kykie's own bedroom windows with some cobwebby snowy muslin she had bought in Shanghai. She spent several hours every day at the piano, playing old Irish melodies, for which she had a passion, and of which she had made an enormous collection; but she always waited until Luce was out of the house, for he had a peculiar aversion to melodies of any kind and more especially Irish melodies. He said:
"There may have been something in them when the strolling poets played them on their harps, but since that fellow Moore made them pretty, I consider them damned mawkish."
So Poppy kept her melodies to herself. The rest of her time was divided between studying literature, writing, dreaming and wandering in the garden, which became dearer to her day by day.
At last, one evening, on hearing from Kykie that Abinger would be dining at home, she made herself look as charming as possible in a pale maize satin gown with a wreath of green leaves on her hair, and went down prepared to do battle.
Luce Abinger was already in the drawing-room, standing at one of the French windows, staring out into the garden—a sombre, solitary figure. She noticed, as often before, how tall and well-built he was, and the fine line of his head under the smooth, fair hair. He always looked distinguished and well-born in evening-dress. At the sound of Poppy he turned, and the lights shining on his maimed and distorted face, showed her that he was entertaining at least seven devils. A mental shiver passed through her and hope fell several degrees; but she advanced with a serene smile and a gay word. She had long ago learnt to control the expressions of her face, so that he might not guess the mingled terror, pity, and repulsion he often roused in her; and though she knew that in most things he had intuition as cruel as the grave, she believed that in this, at least, she was able to deceive him.