POPPIE.
Thomas woke the next morning with a well-deserved sense of something
troubling him. This too was a holiday, but he did not feel in a holiday
mood. It was not from any fear that Mary might be the worse for her
exposure, neither was it from regret for his conduct toward her. What
made him uncomfortable was the feeling rather than thought that now
Mrs. Boxall, Mary's mother, had a window that overlooked his premises,
a window over which he had no legal hold, but which, on the contrary,
gave her a hold over him. It was a window, also, of which she was not
likely, as he thought, to neglect the advantage. Nor did it console
him to imagine what Lucy would think, or--which was of more weight
with Thomas--say or do, if she should happen to hear of the affair of
yesterday. This, however, was very unlikely to happen; for she had not
one friend in common with her cousins, except just her lover. To-day
being likewise a holiday, he had arranged to meet her at the Marble
Arch, and take her to that frightful source of amusement, Madame
Tussaud's. Her morning engagement led her to that neighborhood, and
it was a safe place to meet in--far from Highbury, Hackney, and Bagot
Street.
The snow was very deep. Mrs. Boxall tried to persuade Lucy not to go.
But where birds can pass, lovers can pass, and she was just finishing
her lesson to resplendent little Miriam as Thomas got out of an omnibus
at Park Street, that he might saunter up on foot to the Marble Arch.
The vision of Hyde Park was such as rarely meets the eye of a Londoner.
It was almost grotesquely beautiful. Even while waiting for a lovely
girl, Thomas could not help taking notice of the trees. Every bough,
branch, twig, and shoot supported a ghost of itself, or rather a white
shadow of itself upon the opposite side from where the black shadow
fell. The whole tree looked like a huge growth of that kind of coral
they call brain-coral, and the whole park a forest of such coralline
growths. But against the sky, which was one canopy of unfallen snow,
bright with the sun behind it, the brilliant trees looked more like
coral still, gray namely, and dull.
Thomas had not sauntered and gazed for more than a few minutes before
he saw Lucy coming down Great Cumberland Street toward him. Instead of
crossing the street to meet her, he stood and watched her approach.
There was even some excuse for his coolness, she looked so picturesque
flitting over the spotless white in her violet dress, her red cloak,
her grebe muff. I do not know what her bonnet was; for if a bonnet be
suitable, it allows the face to show as it ought, and who can think of
a bonnet then! But I know that they were a pair of very dainty morocco
boots that made little holes in the snow across Oxford Street toward
the Marble Arch where Thomas stood, filled, I fear, with more pride in
the lovely figure that was coming to _him_ than love of her.
"Have I kept you waiting long, Thomas?" said Lucy, with the sweetest of
smiles, her teeth white as snow in the summer flush of her face.
"Oh! about ten minutes," said Thomas. It wasn't five. "What a cold
morning it is!"
"I don't feel it much," answered Lucy. "I came away the first moment I
could. I am sorry I kept you waiting."
"Don't mention it, Lucy. I should be only too happy to wait for you as
long every morning," said Thomas, gallantly, not tenderly.
Lucy did not relish the tone. But what could she do? A tone is one of
the most difficult things to fix a complaint upon. Besides, she was not
in a humor to complain of any thing if she could help it. And, to tell
the truth, she was a little afraid of offending Thomas, for she looked
up to him ten times more than he deserved.
"How lovely your red cloak looked--quite a splendor--crossing the
snow!" he continued.
And Lucy received this as a compliment to herself, and smiled again.
She took his arm--for lovers will do that sometimes after it is quite
out of fashion. But, will it be believed? Thomas did not altogether
like her doing so, just because it was out of fashion.
"What a delightful morning it is," she said. "Oh! do look at the bars
of the railing."
"Yes, I see. The snow has stuck to them. But how can you look at such
vulgar things as iron stanchions when you have such a fairy forest as
that before you?" said the reader of Byron, who was not seldom crossed
by a feeling of dismay at finding Lucy, as he thought, decidedly
unpoetical. He wanted to train her in poetry, as, with shame let it
flow from my pen, in religion.
"But just look here," insisted Lucy, drawing him closer to the fence.
"You are short-sighted, surely, Thomas. Just look there."
"Well, I see nothing but snow on both sides of the paling-bars,"
returned Thomas.
"Now I am sure you are short-sighted. It is snow on the one side, but
not on the other. Look at the lovely crystals."
On the eastern quarter of each upright bar the snow had accumulated and
stuck fast to the depth of an inch: the wind had been easterly. The
fall had ceased some hours before morning, and a strong frost had set
in. That the moisture in the air should have settled frozen upon the
iron would not have been surprising; what Lucy wondered at was, that
there should be a growth, half an inch long, of slender crystals, like
the fungous growth commonly called mold, only closer, standing out
from the bar horizontally, as if they had grown through it, out of the
soil of the snow exactly opposite to it on the other side. On the one
side was a beaten mass of snow, on the other a fantastic little forest
of ice.
"I do not care about such microscopic beauties," said Thomas, a little
annoyed that she whom he thought unpoetical could find out something
lovely sooner than he could; for he was of those in whom a phantasm
of self-culture is one of the forms taken by their selfishness. They
regard this culture in relation to others with an eye to superiority,
and do not desire it purely for its own sake. "Those trees are much
more to my mind, now."
"Ah, but I do not love the trees less. Come into the park, and then we
can see them from all sides."
"The snow is too deep. There is no path there."
"I don't mind it. My boots are very thick."
"No, no; come along. We shall get to Madame Tussaud's before there are
many people there. It will be so much nicer."
"I should like much better to stay here awhile," said Lucy, half vexed
and a little offended.
But Thomas did not heed her. He led the way up Oxford Street. She had
dropped his arm, and now walked by his side.
"A nice lover to have!" I think I hear some of my girl readers say. But
he was not so bad as this always, or even gentle-tempered Lucy would
have quarreled with him, if it had been only for the sake of getting
rid of him. The weight of yesterday was upon him. And while they were
walking up the street, as handsome and fresh a couple as you would find
in all London, Mary was lying in her bed talking wildly about Thomas.
Alas for the loving thoughts of youth and maidens, that go out like the
dove from the ark, and find no room on the face of the desired world to
fold their wings and alight! Olive-leaves they will gather in plenty,
even when they are destined never to build a nest in the branches of
the olive tree. Let such be strong notwithstanding, even when there are
no more olive-leaves to gather, for God will have mercy upon his youths
and maidens, and they shall grow men and women. Let who can understand
me.
Having thus left the beauties of nature behind them for the horrible
mockery of art at Madame Tussaud's, Thomas became aware from Lucy's
silence that he had not been behaving well to her. He therefore set
about being more agreeable, and before they reached Baker Street she
had his arm again, and they were talking and laughing gayly enough.
Behind them, at some distance, trotted a small apparition which I must
now describe.
It was a little girl, perhaps ten years old, looking as wild as any
savage in Canadian forest. Her face was pretty, as far as could be
judged through the dirt that variegated its surface. Her eyes were
black and restless. Her dress was a frock, of what stuff it would
have been impossible to determine, scarcely reaching below her knees,
and rent upward into an irregular fringe of ribbons that frostily
fanned her little legs as she followed the happy couple, in a pair of
shoes much too large for her, and already worn into such holes as to
afford more refuge for the snow than for her feet. Her little knees
were very black, and oh! those poor legs, caked and streaked with
dirt, and the delicate skin of them thickened and cracked with frost
and east winds and neglect! They could carry her through the snow
satisfactorily, however--with considerable suffering to themselves, no
doubt. But Poppie was not bound to be miserable because Poppie's legs
were anything but comfortable; there is no selfishness in not being
sorry for one's own legs. Her hair, which might have been expected to
be quite black, was mingled with a reddish tinge from exposure to the
hot sun of the preceding summer. It hung in tangled locks about her,
without protection of any sort. How strange the snow must have looked
upon it! No doubt she had been out in the storm. Her face peeped out
from among it with the wild innocence of a gentle and shy but brave
little animal of the forest. Purposely she followed Lucy's red cloak.
But this was not the first time she had followed her; like a lost pup,
she would go after this one and that one--generally a lady--for a whole
day from place to place, obedient to some hidden drawing of the heart.
She had often seen Lucy start from Guild Court, and had followed her
to the railway; and, at length, by watching first one station and then
another, had found out where she went every morning. Knowing then that
she could find her when she pleased, she did not follow her more than
twice a week or so, sometimes not once--just as the appetite woke in
her for a little of her society. But my reader must see more of her
before he or she will be interested enough in her either to please me
or to care to hear more about the habits of this little wild animal of
the stone forest of London. She had never seen Lucy with a gentleman
before. I wonder if she had ever in her little life walked side by side
with anybody herself; she was always trotting behind. This was the
little girl whom Miss Matilda Kitely, her father's princess, called
Poppie, and patronized, although she was at least two years older than
herself, as near as could be guessed. Nor had she any other name; for
no one knew where she had come from, or who were her parents, and she
herself cared as little about the matter as anybody.
The lovers were some distance ahead of Poppie, as they had been all
the way, when they entered the passage leading to the wax works. The
instant she lost sight of them so suddenly, Poppie started in pursuit,
lost one of her great shoes, and, instead of turning to pick it up,
kicked the other after it--no great loss--and scampered at full
barefooted speed over the snow, which was here well trodden. They could
hardly have more than disappeared at the further end when she arrived
at the entrance.
Poppie never thought about _might_ or _might_ not, but only about
_could_ or _could not_. So the way being open, and she happening to
have no mind that morning to part with her company before she was
compelled, she darted in to see whether she could not get another peep
of the couple. Not only was the red cloak a fountain of warmth to
Poppie's imagination, but the two seemed so happy together that she
felt in most desirable society.
Thomas was in the act of paying for admission at the turnstile, when
she caught sight of them again. The same moment that he admitted them,
the man turned away from his post. In an instant Poppie had crept
through underneath, dodged the man, and followed them, taking care,
however, not to let them see her, for she had not the smallest desire
to come to speech with them.
The gorgeousness about her did not produce much effect upon Poppie's
imagination. What it might have produced was counteracted by a
strange fancy that rose at once under the matted covering of that
sunburnt hair. She had seen more than one dead man carried home upon
a stretcher. She had seen the miserable funerals of the poor, and the
desolate coffin put in the earth. But she knew that of human beings
there were at least two very different breeds, of one of which she
knew something of the habits and customs, while of the other she knew
nothing, except that they lived in great houses, from which they were
carried away in splendid black carriages, drawn by ever so many horses,
with great black feathers growing out of their heads. What became of
them after that she had not the smallest idea, for no doubt they would
be disposed of in a manner very different from the funerals she had
been allowed to be present at. When she entered the wax-work exhibition
the question was solved. This was one of the places to which they
carried the grand people after they were dead. Here they set them up,
dressed in their very best, to stand there till--ah, till when, Poppie?
That question she made no attempt to answer. She did not like the look
of the dead people. She thought it a better way to put them in the
earth and have done with them, for they had a queer look, as if they
did not altogether like the affair themselves. And when one of them
stared at her, she dodged its eyes, and had enough to do between them
all and the showman; for though Poppie was not afraid of anybody, she
had an instinctive knowledge that it was better to keep out of some
people's way. She followed the sight of her friend, however, till the
couple went into the "chamber of horrors," as if there was not horror
enough in seeing humanity imitated so abominably in the outer room.
Yes, I am sorry to say it, Lucy went into that place, but she did
not know what she was doing, and it was weeks before she recovered
her self-respect after it. However, as Thomas seemed interested, she
contrived to endure it for a little while--to endure, I do not mean
the horror, for that was not very great--but the vulgarity of it all.
Poppie lingered, not daring to follow them, and at length, seeing a
large party arrive, began to look about for some place of refuge. In
the art of vanishing she was an adept, with an extraordinary proclivity
toward holes and comers. In fact, she could hardly see a hole big
enough to admit her without darting into it at once to see if it would
do--for what, she could not have specified--but for general purposes of
refuge. She considered all such places handy, and she found one handy
now.
Close to the entrance, in a recess, was a couch, and on this couch
lay a man. He did not look like the rest of the dead people, for his
eyes were closed. Then the dead people went to bed sometimes, and to
sleep. Happy dead people--in a bed like this! For there was a black
velvet cover thrown over the sleeping dead man, so that nothing but his
face was visible; and to the eyes of Poppie this pall looked so soft,
so comfortable, so enticing! It was a place to dream in. And could
there be any better hiding-place than this? If the man was both dead
and sleeping, he would hardly object to having her for a companion.
But as she sent one parting peep round the corner of William Pitt or
Dick Turpin, after her friends, ere she forsook them to lie down with
the dead, one of the attendants caught sight of her, and advanced to
expel the dangerous intruder. Poppie turned and fled, sprang into the
recess, crept under the cover, like a hunted mouse, and lay still,
the bed-fellow of no less illustrious a personage than the Duke of
Wellington, and cold as he must have been, Poppie found him warmer than
her own legs. The man never thought of following her in that direction,
and supposed that she had escaped as she had managed to intrude.
Poppie found the place so comfortable that she had no inclination
to change her quarters in haste. True, it was not nice to feel the
dead man when she put out foot or hand; but then she need not put out
foot or hand. And Poppie was not used to feeling warm. It was a rare
sensation, and she found it delightful. Every now and then she peeped
from under the _mortcloth_--for the duke was supposed to be lying in
state--to see whether Thomas and Lucy were coming. But at length, what
with the mental and physical effects of warmth and comfort combined,
she fell fast asleep, and dreamed she was in a place she had been in
once before, though she had forgotten all about it. From the indefinite
account she gave of it, I can only conjecture that it was the
embodiment of the vaguest memory of a motherly bosom; that it was her
own mother's bosom she recalled even thus faintly, I much doubt. But
from this undefined bliss she was suddenly aroused by a rough hand and
a rough voice loaded with a curse. Poppie was used to curses, and did
not mind them a bit--somehow they never hurt her--but she was a little
frightened at the face of indignant surprise and wrath which she saw
bending over her when she awoke. It was that of one of the attendants,
with a policeman beside him, for whom he had sent before he awoke the
child, allowing her thus a few moments of unconscious blessedness, with
the future hanging heavy in the near distance. But the duke had slept
none the less soundly that she was by his side, and had lost none of
the warmth that she had gained. It was well for Ruth that there were
no police when she slept in Boaz's barn; still better that some of the
clergymen, who serve God by reading her story on the Sunday, were not
the magistrates before whom the police carried her. With a tight grasp
on her arm, Poppie was walked away in a manner uncomfortable certainly
to one who was accustomed to trot along at her own sweet will--and a
sweet will it was, that for happiness was content to follow and keep
within sight of some one that drew her, without longing for even a
word of grace--to what she had learned to call _the jug_, namely, the
police prison; but my reader must not spend too much of his stock of
sympathy upon Poppie; for she did not mind it much. To be sure in such
weather the jug was very cold, but she had the memories of the past to
comfort her, the near past, spent in the society of the dead duke, warm
and consoling. When she fell asleep on the hard floor of the _lock-up_,
she dreamed that she was dead and buried, and trying to be warm and
comfortable, as she ought to be in her grave, only somehow or another
she could not get things to come right; the wind would blow through the
chinks of her pauper's coffin; and she wished she had been a duke or
a great person generally, to be so grandly buried as they were in the
cemetery in Baker Street. But Poppie was far less to be pitied for the
time, cold as she was, than Mary Boxall, lying half asleep and half
awake and all dreaming in that comfortable room, with a blazing fire,
and her own mother sitting beside it. True, likewise, Poppie heard a
good many bad words and horrid speeches in the jug, but she did not
heed them much. Indeed, they did not even distress her, she was so
used to them; nor, upon occasion, was her own language the very pink
of propriety. How could it be? The vocabulary in use in the houses
she knew had ten vulgar words in it to one that Mattie, for instance,
would hear. But whether Poppie, when speaking the worst language that
ever crossed her lips, was lower, morally and spiritually considered,
than the young lord in the nursery, who, speaking with articulation
clear cut as his features, and in language every word of which is to be
found in Johnson; refuses his brother a share of his tart and gobbles
it up himself, there is to me, knowing that if Poppie could swear she
could share, no question whatever. God looks after his children in the
cellars as well as in the nurseries of London.
Of course she was liberated in the morning, for the police magistrates
of London are not so cruel as some of those country clergymen who, not
content with preaching about the justice of God from the pulpit, must
seat themselves on the magistrate's bench to dispense the injustice of
men. If she had been brought before some of them for sleeping under
a hay-stack, and having no money in her pocket, as if the night sky,
besides being a cold tester to lie under, were something wicked as
well, she would have been sent to prison; for, instead of believing in
the blessedness of the poor, they are of Miss Kilmansegg's opinion,
"that people with nought are naughty." The poor little thing was only
reprimanded for being where she had no business to be, and sent away.
But it was no wonder if, after this adventure, she should know Thomas
again when she saw him; nay, that she should sometimes trot after him
for the length of a street or so. But he never noticed her.