A little over twenty-four years before, Nellie Pope had been born to two
honest, hard-working country folk. They lived in a village of about two
dozen cottages a stone's throw from the great cross cut by the Romans on
the chalky side of Chiltern Hills, in England. Her parents' quiver had
already been a full one and there was indeed very little room in it for
the new arrival. Eight other boys and girls had preceded her with a
rapidity which must have surprised nature herself, bounteous as she is.
The father, a deep-chested, brown-bearded, very ignorant, but
good-natured man, worked all the year round on a farm. His wages were
fourteen shillings a week. The wife, who had been a domestic servant,
added to the family pot by taking in washing and, if able, helping at
the big house when guests were there. Neither of them had ever been
farther away from their native village than the town which lay in the
saucer of the valley, the steeple of whose church could be seen glinting
in the sun away below.
Little Nellai, as she was called, was thrown on her own resources from
the moment that she could crawl out of the narrow kitchen door into the
patch of garden where potatoes grew and eager chickens played the
scavenger for odd morsels of food. Her eldest sister was her real
mother, and it was she who daily led her little brood of dirty-faced
children out into the beech forest which stood in strange silence behind
the cottage. The monotonous years slipped by one after another,
enlivened only by a death or a birth or a fight, or a very occasional
jaunt to the town in one of the farm wagons, perched up on a load of hay
or wedged in between sacks of potatoes. Little Nellai's pretty face and
fair hair very soon made her a pet of the lady at the big house, and it
was from this kind, but mistaken person, from whom she obtained the
seeds of discontent which at the early age of sixteen sent her into the
town as a "help" in the kitchen of a man who kept a garage. It was from
this place, on the main road to London, that Nellie Pope saw life for
the first time and became aware of the fact that the world was a larger
place than the little village perched up so near the sky, and caught the
fever of discovery from the white dust that was left behind by the cars
which sped to London one way, and to Oxford the other.
During this first year among shops and country louts, Nellie became
aware of the fact that her pretty face and fair hair were very valuable
assets. They procured her candies and many other little presents. They
enabled her to make a choice among the young men with whom to walk out.
They won smiles and pleasant words not only from the chauffeurs of the
cars which came into her master's garage to be attended to, but also
from their owners. Eventually it was one of these--more unscrupulous
than most--who, staying for a few days at the "Red Lion," carried Nellie
away with him to London, after several surreptitious meetings in the
shady lane at the back of the churchyard. There it was that she saw life
with very naked eyes, passed quickly from one so-called protector to
another, was taken to the United States by one of a troupe of gymnasts,
and then deserted. For two years she had been numbered among the night
birds who flit out after dark--a member of the oldest profession in the
world. There were, however, no moments in her life--hard, terrible and
sordid as it was--when she looked back with anything like regret at
those heavily thatched cottages which stood among their little gardens
on the side of the hills. She could put up with the fatigue, brutality
and uncertainty, the gross actuality of her present life, with courage,
cheerfulness and even optimism, but the mere thought of the deadly
monotony of that peaceful village, where summer followed winter with
inexorable routine, made her shudder. The first pretty frock which had
been given her by the lady of the big house had begun the work. The
candies and the little presents from the country louts had completed it;
and here she was, still very young, with a heart still kind and with a
nature not yet warped and brutalized,--a danger to any community in
which she lived, the deliberate spreader of something so frightful that
science and civilization stood abashed in her presence.
Vanity has much to answer for, and out of nature spring many plants
whose tempting berries are filled with poison.
It was in the bed of this wretched little woman that the unconscious
Peter slept that night.
It was ten o'clock in the morning when the weary girl faced another day.
She didn't grumble at the fact that she had been frequently disturbed
and had watched many of the hours go by while she attended to Peter with
something of the spirit of a Magdalen. She kept repeating to herself:
"Poor boy! Poor boy! I wonder what his mother would say if she saw him
like this."
She bathed his head, listened with astonishment to his babbling, and
tried to piece together his incoherent pleading with Ranken Townsend and
his declarations to Betty of his everlasting love. She listened with
acute interest to the broken sentences which showed her that this great
big man-boy was endeavoring to stir up his father to do something which
seemed to him to be urgent and vital, and she wondered who Graham was,
and Nicholas.
The first thing that she did when she was dressed and had put the kettle
on her gas stove to boil, was to hunt through Peter's pockets to find
out who he was. It was obvious to her that he was not so much a customer
as a patient. She was a little afraid of accepting the whole
responsibility of his case. The only letter she found was one signed
"Graham," headed with the address of an office in Wall Street. In the
corner of it was printed a telephone number. Graham, it was plain to
her, was a Christian name. She could find no suggestion of the surname
of the writer or of the man who lay so heavily in the next room.
"I dunno," she said to herself. "Something has got to be done. That
boy's in a bad way. 'E's as 'ot as a pancake and I shouldn't think 'e's
used to drink by the way 'e takes it. Suppose hanything should 'appen to
'im 'ere. I should look funny. What 'ad I better do?"
What she did was to have breakfast. During this hasty meal she thought
things over--all her hard-won practicality at work in her brain. Then
she put on her befeathered hat and her white gloves, a second-best pair
of shoes, and went out and along the street, and into the nearest drug
store. Here she entered the telephone booth and asked for the number
that was printed on Graham's note. By that time it was just after nine
o'clock. Having complied with the sharp request to slip the necessary
nickel into the slot, an impatient voice recited the name of the firm.
"I want to speak to Mr. Graham," she said. "No such name--? Well, keep
your 'air on, Mister. I may be a client--a millionaire's wife--for all
you know. I'm asking for Mr. Graham and as 'e's a friend of mine, and
probably your boss, I'm not bothering about his surname. You know that
as well as I do--Do I mean Mr. Graham Guthrie? Well, yes. Who else
should I mean?" She gave a chuckle of triumph. "All right! I'll 'old
on."
In a moment or two there was another voice on the telephone. "How d'you
do?" she said. "I'm holding a letter signed by you, to 'Dear
Peter,'--Ah! I thought that would make you jump--It doesn't matter what
my name is. What's that--? Yes, I _do_ know where he is. I've been
looking after 'im all night. Come up to my place right away and I'll be
there to meet you. Dear Peter is far from well." She gave her address,
and feeling immensely relieved left the box. But before she left the
store she treated herself to a large box of talcum powder and a
medium-sized bottle of her favorite scent, paying the bill with Peter's
money. She considered herself to be fully justified.
On the way home she dropped into a delicatessen shop and bought some
sausages, a bottle of pickles, a queer German salad of raw herring
chopped up with carrots and onions, and carried these away with her. On
her way up-stairs--the bald, hard stairs--she was greeted by a
half-dressed person whose hair was in curl-papers and who had opened her
door to pick up a daily paper which lay outside. "Hello, Miss Pope!
Anything doing?" "Yes," said Nellie Pope, "the market's improving," and
she laughed and went on.
Peter was still lying inert when she bent over him once more. She felt
his head again, put the covers about his shoulders, pulled the blind
more closely over the window, and after having put the food away
returned to make up her face. She wasn't going to be caught looking what
she called "second-rate" by this Mr. Graham Guthrie when he came.
There being no need to practice rigid economy at that moment, she gave
herself a glass of beer and sat down to pass the time with her magazine,
in which life was regarded through very rosy spectacles.
When finally she opened the door, in response to a loud and insistent
ring, her answer to Graham's abrupt question: "Is my brother _here_?"
was "Yes; why shouldn't he be?" She didn't like the tone. The word
"here" was underlined in an unnecessarily unpleasant manner.