by Poppy
"Wait," Poppy wailed. "Wait."
"Later. Later."
"How long?" Poppy called after his retreating back.
"How long to San Francisco?"
Jack called back over his shoulder, and Poppy collapsed against the hard, lumpy pillow. She could not have heard right. Jack could not have said three or four months. Four days had nearly killed her, and nobody could survive four months of this kind of life.
New darkness against her closed eyes made her look up. A large black body blocked the doorway, and above it a dead-white, square face with a red slash of mouth and two hard black eyes peered from under a black fringe topped by a satin hat. Poppy cringed back instinctively.
"I have looked in to see if you are feeling better," the woman said in surprisingly good English but with a strong provincial French accent.
"A little, thank you."
"Madame misses her girls," a man's voice murmured insinuatingly, and a black broadcloth shoulder edged the woman aside. The man's face was lined and sallow, with a thin auburn mustache lighter than his carefully combed hair. His eyes were as expressionless as silver coins. "We've all hoped to see you on deck soon."
"I am Madame de Ceyenne," the woman said with a sting in her socially sweet tones. "You must come sit with me in the sun when you are better." And she drew away with a swish of heavy satin skirts.
The man leaned against the door in the full light of the lamp. The minute Poppy saw his immaculate grooming and the long slender white fingers lifted to his thin mustache, she recognized what he was. The marks of a professional gambler were international and unmistakable.
"Maurice Santerre," he introduced himself. His English, too, was excellent. "I understand you travel with your two brothers?"
"Yes."
"Good. Madame de Ceyenne saw you come aboard and has inquired about you repeatedly. She is accustomed to the company of pretty girls, and hers are otherwise occupied these days."
Poppy's hands flew to her matted, tangled hair and brushed futilely at her crumpled bed wrap.
"You will look better when you feel better," Maurice said consolingly and eased away from the door. "Au revoir, Mademoiselle."
Poppy stared at the empty doorway. Santerre, without land. That was a made-up name if ever she heard one, the name of a man going to a new place for a fresh start. But he had not been in search of a flirt. Such men found women easily and only cards engrossing.
He had been telling her something, trying to warn her. He had been warning her against Madame de Ceyenne. And those remarks about pretty girls? Madame could be quite literally a madam, on board with some of her girls. But Maurice had reminded her-and she was certain every word of that conversation had been calculated-she was not alone. She had two brothers to protect her.
She always had liked gamblers, Poppy reminded herself, and wondered where her hairbrush was. Andy must look for it and a pretty shawl the minute he returned.
Chapter Seventeen
A westerly breeze held steady, and a pale sun came out. Poppy revived and began to eat.
Andy brought food from the Captain's galley-chicken soup, hard-boiled eggs, hard rolls, cheese. In her own cabin stores, Poppy found bard candies, apples, and dried fruits. The nuts, chocolates, candied ginger, and rich cakes she put back for the future.
She investigated the other tin boxes. One held books she'd bought in Paris, novels by Mr. Dickens, Mr. Trollope, and Mr. Dumas, and two French fashion books. On the bottom were hidden a Spanish grammar, three books of Spanish fairy tales, and lined paper and pencils. Poppy puzzled over the Spanish books. She had thought California was a part of the United States, and Americans spoke English, or almost English, no worse than many Soots.
A wooden box of pastels and sticks of charcoal and a pad of drawing paper filled the top of the next box. Andy might have picked up a fancy for such things in Paris. She put them aside for him. Under them was a pretty little sewing box of gold-embossed white kid, lined with gold satin and fitted with dainty scissors, needles, and thread. She pounced with delight on two decks of cards, and laughed when she saw a bride's book of household hints and cooking instructions. Delphine had selected and packed this box. But did Delphine actually expect her to use that roll of heavy Irish linen and the bright silk threads for embroidery, or the knitting needles and skeins of fine cream wool?
Andy reported the men had rigged up a canvas screen behind which they could freshen themselves with salt water. He brought her a pail of hot, fresh water and warned her Cook would heat no larger amount. When she was clean and dressed for the first time, Poppy looked in her mirror and winced. Her face was pale and drawn, with dark shadows under her eyes, and her hair hung limp. Probably it was for the best, Poppy decided dolefully. Any man on this ship could only be trouble, a fugitive from the law or his own past.
"Dining hall?" Andy snorted when she asked. "Below decks, amidships, there's a long corridor that the inside cabins open onto. For eating, there are rough planks set on saw horses all along that corridor, and it's so narrow the people can barely squeeze in and out of their doors. The second cook-the officers have their own and there's two more for steerage and the crew-slides the plates out of the galley and along the table, and everybody grabs."
"For the cabin passengers?" Poppy gasped.
"You don't think this Captain wasted any space he could sell? I'll fill our plates and bring them up here."
"Isn't there a saloon?"
"That's rigged up as a men's dormitory."
"Could we eat on deck in nice weather?"
"You were sick too long. The deck chairs were grabbed the first day. Maurice took the space aft of the poop deck for the card players. Then everybody started fighting for the other good spots." Andy laughed and capered. "I mean really fighting with fists, knock-down fights. I saw one."
Poppy had been watching out the window. "Then I'll just go out and walk around and around, on days when it isn't so rough."
"Madame Ceyenne found herself a nice spot in the lee of that forward hatchway. It's out of the wind and sunny all during the middle of the day. She's got a couple of boxes, and she said to tell you that you're welcome to join her there when you feel well enough to come on deck."
"You must thank her for me," Poppy said stiffly.
But she was disconcerted. She could not spend all her time in the tiny, stifling cabin. Yet peering from behind the window curtain, she had noticed each lady promenaded with a gentleman. She had counted over a dozen ladies, all as elegantly dressed as if for the street. The other gentlemen strolled in twos and threes and looked at the ladies. Alone, she would be intolerably conspicuous.
When Jack dropped in later, Poppy indignantly reported Madame's offer. Jack surprised her.
"You've got to have some fresh air. Madame makes no bones about what she is, but she's turned her girls loose for the trip. Loose and ready, they're acting."
"Naturally," Poppy sniffed.
Jack chuckled. "Cooped up here, you haven't had II good look at our respectable matrons and young ladies. Every day they're rolling their eyes a little wilder and flirting their skirts a little more. They're betting in the forecastle that before we reach the equator, there won't be one that hasn't kicked up her heels and landed in some gentleman's stall."
"Jack," Poppy gasped.
"It's the truth. Long voyages do something to the ladies. The female constitution isn't suited for it."
Poppy stamped her foot. "No human constitution is suited for living in a fish bowl. I suppose the men are patterns of respectability?"
''They take more to drink and fighting," Jack admitted. "Fortunately nobody could bring much liquor aboard, and it's almost gone."
"Then I suppose it will be all right for me to walk around by myself?" Poppy suggested.
"The gentlemen would take it that you're showing you're up and available."
"Like a street girl?" Poppy gasped.
"This is a long voyage," Jack said. "Now Madame's fixed herself up a cozy sp
ot. I don't know a better one. Join her and thank her for it. Her profession's not contagious, and no gentleman's going to try to pluck you out from under her wing."
"I think you're moonstruck."
"Get out of this dark hole, and you'll see what I mean. And don't forget it could be a month yet before we even reach the equator. Meanwhile, all the ladies and gentlemen will be jockeying for places at the starting gate, trying to find partners for the race, so to speak, and alone you'll be, right in the middle of the jostling."
"You are both rude and vulgar," Poppy said crushingly.
"Beneath contempt," Jack agreed laughing, then left.
Poppy spent the next two days watching from behind her curtain. She began to recognize the different faces, and the ladies did seem to change partners from day to day. Skittish was the only word for the way they were acting. The gentlemen had an expression she recognized, too. She had seen it in London, on gentlemen walking along a street and openly looking at the strolling girls, eyeing them up and down, to decide which one they were going to offer an arm to.
She could see that if she walked out there alone, it would be taken as an invitation. Impossible. And Jack had said a month to the equator. Poppy looked around the dark, cramped cabin and groaned.
She was not going to admit she had only the vaguest idea what the equator was and had thought it was somewhere near the Arctic. Geography always had seemed to her the most useless subject, coloring one part of a map blue and another part pink, with a sharp line between them. Anybody with sense knew you could walk right over the spot where that line was supposed 'to be without seeing a thing. The country on either side was exactly the same, and neither pink nor blue.
Jack came in the next morning limping a little, with a bruise high on his cheek. "Fight down in steerage. The garbage of Paris."
"Was anybody hurt?"
''Two killed. We buried them at sunrise. But I think we've got most ofthe knives now. It's hard on the few decent types who got thrown in with the scum. Like the old boy Andy likes so much, even if he did want to teach him Latin. The one he calls The Prof. The poor old guy wanted to swap lessons for some food that isn't pig swill."
"What we get is bad enough."
"It'll get worse," Jack promised, grinning. "So far; we've got some fresh meat and vegetables left. Been on deck yet?"
"No. But I've got to get out of here."
"Right. I put an extra box for you in Madame's comer, and she says to bring your knitting."
"I don't knit."
"Take it anyway," Jack said, digging into a tin box and pulling out needles and wool. "Makes you look respectable, besides being useful for poking the gentlemen if they try to annoy you."
Poppy tied a scarf around her head. She had decided it was less becoming than a bonnet and more practical.
Then she put on her dark heavy coat. Jack approved. "A very model of respectability. Not that Madame's recruiting."
Madame, too, was plainly dressed. Her sensible, well-polished black shoes rested firmly on the deck, her plain black hat was secured by four jet pins. Under her loose black coat, her black satin dress rose in a high collar to her square chin. It was fitted tightly at the wrist and swept the deck with the most modest of circles.
Madame was shocked that Poppy did not knit. She promptly cast on stitches for a plain scarf, put the needles in Poppy's hands, and insisted she work with them.
Madame was frank about her life. She had had a nice house and a good class of trade in Amiens, but a couple of her girls had got in a little trouble, and she had thought it best to make a change. She did not have the money to set up in Paris. The thought of the competition there made Madame click her tongue like castanets. To set up one girl alone in Paris, in a proper apartment with just the barely necessary clothes, cost a fortune. She wanted to keep five of her best girls-good girls all, and she understood their little ways and how to keep them happy-and it had seemed best to make her change to California, even at the cost of six cabin fares. She had sent notices on ahead, giving her girls' names, descriptions, and special talents, for the papers that were published regularly listing the new arrivals from Paris. Business would be waiting at the dock for them. Before she was through, Madame intended to have the handsomest house in San Francisco.
Then in two years, three at the most, Madame was certain she would have enough money to retire and return to France. She had it all planned.
"On the edge of the small village where my god-mother lived," Madame murmured. "I remember it well, and they recall me as a child at her First Communion. Only that." She sighed with satisfaction. "So peaceful, so fertile. A little cottage, a small holding. A few fruit trees, vines for my own wine, a pig, a cow, some chickens, my little garden, and perhaps, only perhaps if the cottage is large enough, a boarder or two. For cash for the tax collector, you understand. But proper, very proper. A teacher, perhaps, or a clerk from the bank. Meek, no trouble, but a steady salary. To feed two or even three is little more expense than one when there is the small garden, the orchard, the chickens. Ah, yes, and the fish 'from the river, fine fish."
"You'd be content with that?"
"It's all I ever wanted. But when one is young, a man is all one wants. A man that looks like nothing to other people, not a good man, but he catches the eye, he appeals for no reason you can explain. Oh, Poppy, youth is a hard time." She tapped Poppy's wrist. "But the knitting, once you learn that, you have it always. For the evenings, the long winter evenings in the cottage, even if you are not alone."
Poppy looked at the lumpy wool on the needles, already slightly grubby. "But you don't knit now, and you are alone, and the evenings are long," she teased.
"I save it for the cottage," Madame said grandly.
Madame did not pry. If a beautiful young girl and .her two brothers chose to go to California, tout le monde was gold mad. Still, Madame learned enough, and Poppy discovered she was receiving tactful advice on everything from how to judge the freshness of eggs to the best way to clean and freshen a street dress without tearing it completely apart. Poppy decided that in other circumstances Madame would have made an excellent housekeeper, capable of handling a large staff in any imposing establishment.
Madame's girls had selected their admirers and settled in with them earlier than the more respectable ladies. And perhaps they did change from cabin to cabin rather more often, but they did it with a certain quiet style and social flair. Where the proper ladies floundered and flounced, unwilling to admit intentions that were becoming clearer each day, Madame's girls shifted easily and daintily.
They showed the result of Madame's discipline in every move. The ladies shrieked when spray spattered the decks and drenched them.
Madame's girls never raised their voices. The ladies sometimes appeared at breakfast less than perfectly groomed. Madame's girls either came with freshly combed hair and fresh-scrubbed faces, or they did not appear.
They never intruded on Poppy and Madame. Poppy was sure that was on Madame's orders and said nothing, although she had decided at least two of them looked as if they would be good company and the rest were not unlikable. Except for Josie.
Poppy always ducked her head so she would not have to watch Josie and the First Mate when they paraded the deck together. The sight of them sent a shiver down her spine every time she saw them. She knew exactly why, too.
Three or perhaps four years before when Daisy was still letting her take lessons from the ballet dancers, Poppy had decided little Joan was the prettiest of them all, so it did not matter if she had no talent as a dancer. She had lovely pale silvery hair, soft as silk, and big blue eyes in a small triangular kitten face. She was as dainty and fragile as a small field flower.
One morning, Joan did the thing all the girls understood was not permitted. She came to call on Daisy at Pallminster Lane. Poppy saw her from an upstairs window and ran down the stairs, but had a second thought. If Daisy humiliated Joan by asking her to leave, a witness would make it twice as bad. So sh
e waited, hovering at the foot of the stairs, hidden behind the half-open door.
Joan was almost crying. ''Please, Daisy, I know it isn't right for me to come here, but I've got to talk to somebody, somebody wise and sensible. The other girls would either laugh at me or lecture me or tell me I'm a fool. But you'll talk to me sensible."
