Poppy placed her minute figure defiantly between Rickman and her rival of the open door. She had exhausted her emotions in those wild cries, and was prepared to enjoy the moment which produced in her the hallucination of self-conscious virtue.
The woman, voluble and fierce, began to describe Miss Grace's character in powerful but somewhat exaggerated language, appealing to the new-comers to vindicate her accuracy. Poppy seated herself on the bed and held a pocket-handkerchief to her virtuous nose. It was the dumb and dignified rebuke of Propriety in an ermine tippet, to Vice made manifest in the infamy of rags. The Beaver retreated in terror on to the landing, where she stood clutching the little basket of jellies and things which she had brought, as if she feared that it might be torn from her in the violence of the scene. Spinks, convulsed with anguish by the sight of his friend lying there unconscious, could only offer an inarticulate expostulation. It was the signal for the woman to burst into passionate self-defence.
"I ain't took nothing 'cept wot the boss 'e myde me. 'Go fer a doctor?' ses 'e. 'No you don't. I don't 'ave no ——y doctor messing round 'ere an' cartin' 'im orf to the 'orspital afore 'e's paid 'is rent.' Ses 'e 'I'm—"
The entrance of Maddox and Rankin checked the hideous flow. They were followed by the porters of the hospital and the nurse in charge. Her presence commanded instantaneous calm.
"There are far too many people in this room," said she. Her expelling glance fell first on Poppy, throned on the bed, then on the convulsive Spinks. She turned more gently to Rankin, in whose mouth she saw remonstrance, and to Maddox, in whose eyes she read despair. "It will really be better for him to take him to the hospital."
"No," cried Spinks, darting in again from the landing, "take him to my house, 45, Dalmeny Av—" but the Beaver plucked him by the sleeve; for she thought of Muriel Maud.
"No, no, take him to mine, 87, Sussex Square," said Rankin, and he insisted. But in the end he suffered himself to be overruled; for he thought darkly of his wife.
"I'd give half my popularity if I could save him," he said to Maddox.
"Half your popularity won't save him, nor yet the whole of it," said Maddox savagely. In that moment they hated themselves and each other for the wrong they had done him. Their hearts smote them as they thought of the brutalities of Sunday night.
The woman still held her ground in the centre of the room where she stood scowling at the nurse as she busied herself about the bed.