Sinister Street, Compton Mackenzie [classic books for 10 year olds .TXT] 📗

“Mine’s Poppy,” she volunteered. “That’s much more free and easy. Or I think so,” she added rather doubtfully, as Michael did not immediately celebrate its license by throwing pillows at her. “Are you really lodging here?” she went on. “You don’t look much like a pro.”

Michael said that was so much the better, as he wasn’t one.

“I’ve got you at last,” cried Poppy. “You’re a shop-walker at Russell’s.”

He could not help laughing very much at this, and the queer pink room seemed to become more faded at the sound of his merriment. Poppy looked offended by the reception of her guess, and Michael hastened to restore her good temper by asking questions of her.

“You’re on the stage, aren’t you?”

“I usually get into panto,” she admitted.

“Aren’t you acting now?”

“Yes, I don’t think. You needn’t be funny.”

“I wasn’t trying to be funny.”

“You mind your business,” she said bitterly. “And I’ll look after mine.”

“There doesn’t seem to be anything very rude in asking if you’re acting now,” said Michael.

“Oh, shut up! As if you didn’t know.”

“Know what?” he repeated.

He looked so genuinely puzzled that Poppy seemed to make an effort to overcome her suspicion of his mockery.

“It’s five years since I went on the game,” she said.

Michael blushed violently, partly on her account, partly for his own stupidity, and explained that Mrs. Murdoch had told him she was in the profession.

“Well, you didn’t expect her to say ‘my ground-floor front’s a gay woman,’ did you?”

He agreed that such an abrupt characterization would have surprised him.

“Well, I’m going out to get dinner now,” she announced.

“Why don’t you dine with me?” Michael suggested.

She looked at him doubtfully.

“Can you afford it?”

“I think I could manage it.”

“Because if we are in the same house that doesn’t say you’ve got to pay my board, does it?” she demanded proudly.

“Once in a way won’t matter,” Michael insisted. “And we might go on to a music hall afterward.”

“Yes, we might, if I hadn’t got to pay the woman who’s looking after my kid for some clothes she’s made for him,” said Poppy. “And sitting with you at the Holborn all night won’t do that. No, you can give me dinner and then I’ll P.O. I’m not going to put on a frock even for you, because I never get off only when I’m in a coat and skirt.”

Michael rose to leave the room while Poppy got ready.

“Go on, sit down. As you’re going to take me out to dinner, you can talk to me while I dress as a reward.”

In this faded pink room where the sun was by now shining with a splendor that made all the strewn clothes seem even more fusty and overblown, Michael could not have borne to see a live thing take shape as it were from such corruption. He made an excuse therefore of letters to be written and left Poppy to herself, asking to be called when she was ready.

Michael’s own room upstairs had a real solidity after the ground-floor front. He wondered if it were possible that Lily was inhabiting at this moment such a room as Poppy’s. It could not be. It could not be. And he realized that he had pictured Lily like Manon in the midst of luxury, craving for magnificence and moving disdainfully before gilded mirrors. This Poppy Carlyle of Neptune Crescent belonged to another circle of the underworld. Lily would be tragical, but this little peaked creature downstairs was scarcely even pathetic. Indeed, she was almost grotesque with the coat and skirt that was to insure her getting off. Of course her only chance was to attract a jaded glance by her positive plainness, her schoolma’am air, her decent unobtrusiveness. Yet she was plucky, and she had accepted the responsibility of supporting her child. There was, too, something admirable in the candor with which she had treated him. There was something friendly and birdlike about her, and he thought how when he had been first aware of her movements below he had compared them to a bird’s fidgeting. There was something really appealing about the gay woman of the ground-floor front. He laughed at her description; and then he remembered regretfully that he had allowed her to forego what might after all have been for her a pleasant evening because she must pay for some clothes the woman who was looking after her child. He could so easily have offered to give her the money. No matter, he could make amends at once and offer it to her now. It would be doubtless an unusual experience for her to come into contact with someone whose rule of life was not dictated by the brutal self-interest of those with whom her commerce must generally lie. She would serve to bring to the proof his theory that so much of the world’s beastliness could be cleansed by having recourse to the natural instincts of decent behavior without any grand effort of reformation. Nevertheless, Michael did feel very philanthropic when he went down to answer Poppy’s summons.

“I say,” he began at once. “It was stupid of me just now not to suggest that I should find the money for your kid’s clothes. Look here, we’ll go to the Holborn after dinner and⁠—” he paused. He felt a delicacy in inquiring how much exactly she might expect to lose by giving him her company⁠—“and⁠—er⁠—I suppose a couple of pounds would buy something?”

“I say, kiddie, you’re a sport,” she said. “Only look here, don’t go and spend more than what you can afford. It isn’t as if we’d met by chance, as you might say.”

“Oh no, I can afford two pounds,” Michael assured her.

“Where shall we go? I know a nice room which the woman lets me have for four shillings. That’s not too much, is it?”

He was touched by her eager consideration for his purse, and he stammered, trying to explain as gently as he could that the two pounds was not offered for hire.

“But, kiddie,