White Poppies. A novel ... With illustrations by R. A. Bell

Front matter

A THE WARWICK HOUSE LIBRARY OF COPYRIGHT NOVELS. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. each. 1. A Study in Scarlet. A. Co/tan Doyle. 2. Stormlight. /. E. Muddock. 3. The Tragic Comedians. George Meredith. 4. A Dead Man's Diary. Coulson KernaJian. -.. To Leeward. F. Marion Crawford. 6. An American Politician. F. Marion Crawford, 7. His Angel. Henry Herman. 8. In Ole Virginia. T. Nelson Page. 9. Standish of Standish. /. G. Austin. 10. Vampires, and Mile. Reseda. J ulien Gordon. 11. The Story of Andrew Fairfax. Joseph Hocking. 12. Joel Marsh, an American. Avery Macalpine. 13. The Sign of Four. A. Conan Doyle. 14. White Poppies. A/ay Kendall. 15. The Story of Sylvia. Hamilton Rowan, 16. Ishmael Pengelly. Joseph Hocking. 17. A Book of Strange Sins. Coulson Kemahan. London : Ward, Lock & Bowden, Ltd. WHITE POPPIES For an instant their eyes met WHITE POPPIES H TRovel BY MAY KENDALL AUTHOR OF "DREAMS TO SELL," "FROM A GARRET," "SUCH IS LIFE," etc.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY R. .4NNING BELL. WARD, LOCK & BOWDEN, LIMITED, LONDON: WARWICK HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C. NEW YORK AXD MELBOURNE. 1893. {All rights reserved.) CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. Trevanion Reflects i II. The Roman Soldier 8 III. Vi iS IV. A Festival 24 V. Waiting for Jim 39 VI. The Princess in the Fire .... 47 VII. Trevanion Reflects 59 VIII. A Sunset 65 IX. Joachim 74 X. Trevanion Reflects S2 XI. On the Embankment 89 XII. Trevanion Reflects 97 XIII. A Holiday 105 XIV. Trevanion Reflects m XV. At Victoria 115 XVI. A Great Soul 123 XVII. Vi's Charm 136 XVIII. Paradise 142 XIX. Between the Lines 147 XX. Trevanion Reflects 158 XXI. Brother Amos 1C1 in CONTENTS. IV PAGB

CHAPTER XXII.

Chapter I. Trevanion Reflects

" Does the day's journey take the whole long day ? " " From morn to night, my friend ! " C. Rossetli. AUSTIN has been in to-night, to smoke cigars and chat. He talked about his own affairs through the first cigar, and then, having a sense of justice I never saw equalled, wanted to occupy the next with mine. But I couldn't. I hadn't been writing treatises, and epics, and what not — but grinding away at hack work. I told him, for he asked me — that there was no possible chance of see ing the last of these debts in less than ten years ; and he sighed, and suggested, as he has done before, dear old fellow, that I should take half his for tune and pay off everything, and begin the career I was going to begin when the Kohinoor Company smashed and my father was ruined ! z B "I don't want your fortune," I said.

"I am glad you have got it — it would have been useless to me. If I had been rich I should have contrived, some how, to fool away the money — started a new kind of Utopia for the unemployed, perhaps, and had an outbreak of malaria and civil war. See what a hash my father made of it, with his money ! But these debts are a life-work to me — a luxury that many people dispense with altogether. They have been like ballast to a ship, they have kept me out of incalculable mischief. Look at it in the light of a life-work." Austin sighed again ; and I wished he wouldn't. " I hate to see the best years of your life He poked the fire, instead of saying " wasted." But I wished he would leave me and my blighted fortunes alone. " Circumstances have moulded me," I said, " while you have been moulding circumstances.

That is all. But since I must devote a good many more years to what you call drudgery, what is the use of crying over spilt milk ? Besides, I find time to put a spoke in humanity's wheel every now and then. I am giving lectures now, at Southwark, to an audience of working men and a few people from the West End who never seem to know exactly what to do with their umbrellas." "That reminds me," said Austin, brightening, " I want you to come and lecture to the Philale thians. They will pay you — and you must let me negotiate that ; for the more they pay, the better they will like it. They want a course of half a dozen lectures ; and you can say exactly what you like to them. Besides, you will see an old friend of yours there— Jim Everard. The Philalethians are helping him with one of his hospitals, and pro bably he will take the chair for you."

"Jim Everard!" said I. "Old Jim! that's enough to put life into a stone. But, Austin, you had better lecture to them yourself. You know more about truth than I do." "But I shall be in Edinburgh," said Austin, and forthwith went on arguing till he persuaded me to promise. It did not occur to me till afterwards that I could not accept much for lecturing on be half of a hospital. However, it does not matter. I should like to see Jim Everard — it is ages since I spoke to him. Last time it was in the street, and he asked me to come and see him. I said I would try, but I never went. Austin is the only man I know who has had time to keep his friends ; and he never knew much of Everard. " 1 must go," said Austin. And he went, but I sat thinking. He often leaves me with a dissatis fied seeling, as if nothing I did were quite right — not even paying off my father's debts, though he would have been the first to do it himself.

But things might have been much worse. For instance, I might have fallen violently in love; and there would have been a pretty complication, especially ;f — which hardly seems probable— the girl had fallen in love with me too. But I never have been in love since the smash, not even with Vi, though once I wasn't so far off as I am now— when I lent her Shelley, and she buttered him. You can't fall in love with a girl who butters your books. And Vi was still less likely to come to grief — though she will fall in love, one of these days, in a manner fearful to contemplate. I believe the girl has oceans of feeling stowed away somewhere, though just now she seems absorbed in chocolates and flirtations, which she talks about to me as naturally as if I were her grandfather. Perhaps I was, in a previous state of existence, which accounts for the perfect safety of the proceeding.

She might do worse than fall in love with Frank Vokes. He isn't her equal, no doubt — men never are ; but he is a good fellow enough — and how he adores her! I shouldn't like to be the man to come between those two, if she could only make up her mind to it. Again, he is immensely rich ; and though Vi is the least mercenary soul on earth, she has a rare gift for spending money. That reminds me that I owe her a birthday present. She bought me these cigars ; and very good ones they are, — too expensive for Vi's purse, I fear. I must put off buy ing a new suit for another month, and get her some thing. A shiny coat and a hat that refuses to shine, will be quite good enough for the Philalethian Society. I shall look more prophetic so. But that royal generosity of Vi's would cover a multitude of sins.

She is beautiful and generous and affectionate enough to make half a dozen ordinary women ; and she would give away the head off her shoulders for any of her friends — even for poor Vokes, in spite of the life she leads him. I should like her to be happy, she has such a capacity for happiness ; but nothing feasible has turned up yet, unless it be Vokes. This isn't work, to be sure ; but I was played out before Austin came. I think sometimes, when the debts are paid, if they ever are, I shall have little enthusiasm left to begin again. The last eight years have taken too much out of me ; but I think I have learned to go on without enthusiasm, maybe. Eight years ago — how I wanted to serve hu manity then. Besides, I was heart-broken, because the girl I had elected to fall in love with had married some one else — and quite right too.

I thought I should never forget her ; but I have. I don't even know where she lives. I wanted her to take as much interest in humanity as I did, and I must have bored her fearfully. I suppose we can all of us bore most the people we care most for. But I am glad she did not care for me — it would never have done. It made me all the more firmly resolved to cast in my lot with humanity. I was emigrating Brooke to Australia, I remember, when the crash came, after trying vainly to find work for him in England. My father was as much interested in the case as I was, and I rushed in, that afternoon, to tell him that Brooke was to start the next day, and I was going to see him off. My father was sitting before his desk, looking a good deal paler than usual, though quite composed. I told him about Brooke — how like a dream it feels now ! and when he had listened, he stopped me as I was going, and said quietly, — " Jack, my boy, we're ruined.

I've ruined you." I remember that I laughed, and said, — " All right, father ! For how much ? " But I knew he meant it, very well. Then I sat down, and we talked it all over ; and a pretty state his affairs were in. And when it seemed clear that, do all we would, we could only pay nine shillings in the pound, we made up our minds to work the rest off. And I have been working ever since. I began the next day, after bidding Brooke good-bye. He had heard the news, somehow ; for he asked me if it was true that I was ruined. I told him I believed so ; and he wrung my hand with tears in his eyes. He was a good fellow, poor Brooke. A year after, when I heard from him, he sounded full of hope. He had married the girl of his heart ; and everything was going prosperously. In the next letter, she had died — I fancy he never got over it.

But he was still prosperous in a worldly sense ; for he wrote again, offering me money. I couldn't take it ; but I wrote and told him what I thought of him, and that there was no one in the world I would ask for money sooner — but that I needed none. That was several years ago; and my father was dead — he only lived one year after the crash came. He had never been a very robust man ; and the trouble of it killed him. But I promised him I would never rest till I had paid every penny, and no more I will.

Chapter II. The Roman Soldier

" A merry heart goes all the way, Your sad tires in a mile." Winter Tale. " T IM," said Elsie, lying back luxuriously in her I favourite chair, " how life pursues the even tenor of its way ! I wish it would pursue something else for a change." " That is a common desire in youth," said her brother, sententiously. " Yes," said Elsie, " but I never was young, you know. But there is such a fearful amount of padding in life : a three volume novel is nothing to it. Why can't we make one short story and have done ? Of course there may be lives that are long, and yet interesting all through, like Dumas, but how seldom one comes across them — very much in the proportion of good novels to bad ones. But in a novel one can skip, and in life one can't : at least, it is immoral ; we have to cut every page, and read every word.

There is too much, too much. And look at all the light and heat that go radiating away into space. It seems — doesiit it seem, Jim, as if there were a great want of concentration in the universe? It was all gas at first, and ever since, Ormuzd has been trying to condense, and Ahriman won't let him. Condensation is the watchword of the future, but the natural instinct of men and things is to spread themselves out as much as possible in time and space ; and so we get Eiffel towers, and theological romances, and ever so many inglorious days, instead of a few glorious ones. Then what a quantity of stars ; and always new ones crowding in, so that the old ones haven't a chance to improve. At least, if there is only a limited amount of energy to start with, it can't go on indefinitely making new worlds, and look after the old ones as well.

Can it, Jim ? " "I don't in the least follow you," said Jim, tranquilly knocking the ashes of his cigar into the fire. " I don't follow it" said Elsie. " But I know there is a great deal too much for the money. Life is like the restaurants where you can get such a quantity of soup for threepence — enough to last a week. It is very wholesome, and so is life, and most instructive ; but there is too much for three pence. And Jim, if it is so for us, what must it be for many people? I went to three of your patients this morning — Brooks, and Mrs. Warren, and Mrs. Philliper. And their lives last so long, with so much rheumatism, and weak tea and bread and butter, and so little interest. There's not enough pain to end itself, only to linger on and on. Fancy going through so much to get so little !

" " How is Mrs. Philliper ? " Jim inquired. " Rather better," said Elsie. " She said ' Bless you, my darling!' and Mrs. Warren said, 'Come again, love.' I'm a favourite with old women, Jim; they think I am sympathetic because I am lame. But it makes one feel worse and worse to think what little things they are grateful for, and how patient they are. They look forward to going to heaven, however — I'm glad they do." Elsie's face had grown anxious and troubled, and Jim surveyed her critically. She was far stronger than she had been as a child, and could walk with out crutches, though she was still slightly lame, but she would always be fragile, and Jim had devised many new tonics for her benefit. "Your head aches," he said ; " you need a tonic." " Mrs. Philliper does," said Elsie. " I don't think I do.

But you'd tell me to take a tonic if my heart were broken, Jim." " Well, yes, I expect I should," returned Jim. " You would take it if you had any sense. How ever, I hope it won't get broken. I don't see why it should." "Dear me, no!" said Elsie, somewhat discon certed at being taken so literally. " My heart won't break, Jim ; it is like leather. But here is tea." " By the way," said Jim, " do you feel equal to seeing Trevanion, Elsie ? To-night his lectures begin, and I might ask him to come in to dinner." " I forgot it was to-night," said Elsie. " I wonder — oh yes, there is plenty to cat. I'm com ing with you to the lecture, Jim. I like to see you take the chair ; you look like Don Quixote on a forlorn hope. My head only wants a cup of tea. Besides, I want to see Mr. Trevanion. It is fine of him to go on paying off his father's debts.

Jim, what would people do without tea ? " " A great deal better," said Jim. " You are taking that too strong." " No," said Elsie, deprecatingly. " It is good for the soul, like confession. Jim, does Mr. Trevanion know a great deal about political and social ethics — isn't that what it is ? I thought he was a reporter." " That is less from choice than necessity, I fancy," said Jim. " He says he can make no money at ethics or politics. If this is the way he goes on I don't wonder at that. He persists in giving these lectures for next to nothing. Says he has no money to give to charitable institutions, and this is all he can do. If we had known, we shouldn't have asked him ; however, the hospital will gain, and he will be a trifle longer in working his debt off." " He must have loved his father," said Elsie.

" Fancy, spending your life in paying off any one's debts you didn't like ! " " He and his father were a great deal to each other, I believe," said Jim. "I heard about it at the time when he left college. He has been at it now for eight years, poor fellow ! Well, I must be off again. I'll call in for you at a quarter past six, Elsie. It isn't far." So Jim took Elsie to the lecture hall, and be stowed her comfortably three or four seats back, and she sat and watched the audience come drift ing in, till the hall was nearly full. It was a curious society, that of the Philalethians, but they meant well, as Jim had recognised when he promised to take the chair on this occasion ; and no doctrine was too advanced for them, so long as they were not expected to act up to it. And the society was still young, retaining its first enthusiasm, and had come prepared to bow down rather than to criticise, which attitude Elsie found refreshing, even if a little overdone.

Tea and coffee were provided in an adjoining room. At half-past six precisely the secretary of the Philalethians ascended the platform, followed by Jim, and then by a figure at which Elsie looked eagerly. Then she met Jim's eyes, and nodded almost imperceptibly. The nod meant that Tre vanion would do. He was not handsome, but she had hardly ever seen a face she liked so much, or that seemed, in spite of its reserve, to reveal so much to her. It was a brave face, a face that could be almost grim in its resolution, she fancied — yet very kindly. She thought then, and always afterwards, that it was the face of a man who would never forget a friend ; and it reminded her dimly of a picture she had seen, of that Roman soldier at Pompeii who refused to leave his post. She could have told, without knowing Trevanion's history, that his life had been a hard one ; and she watched him, hardly realizing that the Phila lethian secretary had risen, and was making a speech.

Yet that speech, in its way, was well worth hearing. There was a little Browning, a little Ibsen, a little of Madam Blavatsky, and "The Light of Asia," and telepathic force, and the people, and the future, and ethics, and politics, and culture, and religion, for all of which the secretary had the greatest respect, so that he did not like to omit any of them. There were many more points, too, so that Elsie began to be terribly afraid that the dinner would be spoiled before they could get back, though Mr. Trevanion did not look as if he cared whether fish were underdone or overdone. Still she knew that men were sometimes more particular than women. But the secretary, on the very brink of passing on to German philosophy, which might have taken some time, realized sud denly that he had been speaking half an hour, and stopped conscience stricken.

Then Jim, without another word, called on Trevanion. Trevanion began his lecture rather wearily. It was not the kind of audience to which he enjoyed speaking. We may talk a good deal about sek ing truth, but what most of us really want is a fresh kind of fiction, and it was so with the Phila lethians. Some one had left the door of the room adjoining slightly ajar, and Trevanion heard the tea-cup of some tardy Philalethian rattle, and wondered whether he took cream and sugar with his truth. When he came in a moment later, trying hard to modify the creaking of his boots, Trevanion felt certain from his expression that the answer would be, — " A little cream, thank you, but no sugar." He was also conscious that his own voice sounded depressed, and that his words carried no conviction with them, and he began hopelessly to scan the audience as he spoke, in quest of inspiration, till suddenly, three rows back, he saw a face that understood him ; and he went on lecturing to that face.

It was a girl's face, as the reader will have guessed, and very beautiful. That night he looked at it often and observantly, though with the "general" look, that any one accustomed to public speaking can always assume. There was some thing in its beauty familiar to him, he hardly knew how or why. Later on he thought that it was only the sense of being " in sympathy " that often springs up between two persons who have never even spoken to each other. That first night he watched it, but before the lectures were ended, he seldom looked towards it, and then almost fur tively. But he lectured to its owner, all the same. " You are coming with us, Trevanion," said Jim, when the lecture was over. " Many thanks," said Trevanion, rather de jectedly, by reason of the " us." A quiet dinner with Everard was one thing ; half a dozen of Everard's brothers and aunts and sisters, who, for aught he knew, would regard him as an authority on truth, was quite another.

Tre vanion put too much of himself into his lectures to feel anything but tired out at the end. "Oh, only my sister, Elsie;" said Jim, tranquilly. "You won't mind her." And he led Trevanion up to "the face." It was after eleven when Trevanion left the Everards' that night ; but then, soon after dinner, they had begun to discuss apparitions, and psychic force, and one knows what that means. Nothing breaks the ice like a ghost, or leaves people so ignorant of the flight of time. " I never stay anywhere like this," said Tre vanion, in perplexity, as he took leave at last. " I don't know how it is." " Do come next Wednesday," said Jim. " If I may,— oh, but I think I had better not ! " said Trevanion. " I have been talking uncon scionably." " I have talked more than you have," said Jim. "And I have just thought of another excellent story, which you must come and hear."

" I am sure I have talked a great deal," said Elsie, but Trevanion shook his head. " No," he said, "you have been silent, and drawn us both on insensibly." "Elsie can talk," said Jim, reassuringly, "but one frequently doesn't know what she means. She proceeds by ellipses, in a manner peculiar to herself ; and you have to be in her mind before you can tell how it all holds together. At least that is the case with me ; but I am a dull fellow." Elsie shook her head in reply to all these state ments ; but she was silent. Just then they were all three standing by the fire, and outside, the rain was beating against the windows. Trevanion looked at her lovely, animated face, with a sudden conviction that he should generally understand her. He shook hands with Jim, then turned to wards the door ; Elsie thought that he was forget ting to bid her good-bye, but the next instant he held out his hand very cordially, saying,— " May I really come again ?

" Do," said Elsie, and her eyes also promised a welcome. " We shall be so glad if you can." " Thank you," said Trevanion. " Then I will come. Good-bye." And Jim went with him to the door. "Don't you like him ? " said Jim, coming back into the drawing-room, where Elsie was yet standing by the fire. " Very much," said Elsie. " I feel as if I must have seen him before." "Where?" inquired Jirn, practically. "At Aunt Sophia's ? " "No," said Elsie, decidedly. " I mean — Jim, do you never feel as if you must have known people before ? " " Oh, you mean a previous existence, and all that kind of thing," said Jim. "Well, I don't know, I think I'll smoke another cigar. Are you sleepy ? " "Not at all," replied Elsie. " Sit down, then." Elsie sat down, expecting some word of wisdom. But none came. Jim was thinking, in fact, that awkward complications might arise if two people, on meeting in this world, felt an inner conviction that they had formerly met in another.

But it did not seem worth while, or indeed, advisable, to sug gest this to Elsie. So he finished his cigar in solemn silence, and when he spoke, it was only to say "Good-night." Trevanion, in the meantime, was walking home in the rain. If, a few hours before, any one had told him that at half-past eleven that night he would be looking forward to the next Wednesday, he would not have believed him. But so it was. C

Chapter III. VI

"Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical." — As You Lite II. TREVANION found a small heliotrope scented note lying on his table the next morning, addressed in a hand he knew well. "Dear Trevanion," it ran, " Can you come and dine on Friday, any time that suits you ? Seven o'clock, say ? Only send back word, for we are going to have a royal spread. You, father and I — no outsiders. I have managed to get the whole day free. There is a great piece of news to tell you, and it's my birth day ! So you must come. " Excuse pen. " Vi." Trevanion smiled ; the note was so like Vi. All her notes were like her, always written in a hurry, apparently, always with bad ink and a bad pen, always on a fresh and hideous kind of writing paper, slate colour, or pink and green, or some appalling shade of yellow ochre.

Nor was it ever VI. 19 smooth, like the writing-paper of other people, but ribbed, or rippled, or embossed. Then half the words were underlined, for no reason apparently, and notes of exclamation were scattered broad cast, and frequently, again for no reason whatever, enclosed in brackets. The handwriting was a wild scrawl, and yet, the letter had an impulsive, careless, generous look that one liked, and that was most expressive of Vi. He sat down and wrote his answer, after pondering over his engage ments. " Dear Vi, " An hour later, if you don't mind. Many happy returns beforehand. "Yours, "John Trevanion." Sometimes, in the course of nature, a Platonic friendship seems possible. Even Trevanion, in the general way a scoffer, did not see why there should not be an occasional exception to the rule that these things cannot come to good.

And his friend ship with Vi was that exception. He had been guide, philosopher, and friend to her, since she was twelve ; and it had always been plain sailing. As for Vi's falling in love with him, his theory that she, having known him from a child, regarded him in the light of a fatherly uncle, once or twice re moved, seemed tenable enough ; at least, nothing had ever occurred to break it down. Besides, Vi knew his circumstances, and that he could not yet afford to marry, as well as he himself did. And he was not, he always concluded vaguely, a man who attracted women. Mr. Romilly, Vi's father, who was curiously un like her, had been Trevanion's tutor, now many years ago. He was a singularly unassuming, un worldly man, who would always be a scholar and a gentleman, but who would never be prosperous.

He had an air half deprecating, half expressive of a certain modest dignity, as of one who knew that he had left many things undone in his battle with the world, that other people would have done, but did not altogether regret this. He had seemed the least likely of men both to fall in love with, and to marry, a handsome, dash ing, good-natured young Irish actress ; but that was what he did. Moreover, as Trevanion knew, for five years they were very happy, though very poor. At the end of these years the young wife died, and Mr. Romilly and his little daughter Vi were left alone in the world. It was eight years after this that Trevanion came across them in London, when their fortunes were at the lowest ebb, and Mr. Romilly was look ing for work in vain. His own prospects, just then, were little brighter ; but he did all he could for his old tutor, who, though destined to be unsuccessful as we count success, was as conscientious, patient, and laborious as a man could be.