by Poppy
"I have a few minutes," Daisy admitted. "Unless you've got yourself a fancy man. If you're laying on your back just to give your money to some man who'll only beat you because you don't bring in more, you are a fool, and I've no time for you."
"Oh, no, no. He's a fine gentleman. Young. And educated. And rich. Generous, ever so generous,"
"You're not thinking he'll marry you?"
"He's married. An heiress, that his family fixed for him,"
"Then sit down and tell me what's wrong."
"I'm half mad for him," Joan said, still sobbing and yet sounding easier. "Only I'm not sure it's right. I don't know what's right and what isn't."
''You haven' been going and getting saved?"
"Oh, no. I like to hear the Bible read. It's real pretty, parts of it. But getting saved isn't for girls like me. I'm not in the gutter and thinking of the river. It's the things Gordon, he, I mean, likes. The special things."
Daisy's voice sharpened. "What does he like?"
"To do, I mean."
"With you?"
''Yes."
"You better tell me and speak plain."
"He doesn't hurt me. He's sweet and gentle as a man can be."
"He's your first regular, as near as to make no difference?" Daisy asked. "Then I'll tell you this, Joan. All men have their little likes and dislikes. And there's no harm in a man being frolicsome. A frolicsome man is usually a happy man. And a vigorous one, not the sickly kind you have to pamper and nurse. A happy man, if a woman keeps him happy, likes his woman to be happy, too. Happy and settled with him and living easy." .
Poppy had held her breath. So that was the way it was. Daisy would never talk about herself, straight out like that, to her own daughter, but she would to Joan. Poppy must not miss a word.
"Yes," Joan was saying eagerly. ''Yes. That's it. His likes. Frolicsome, maybe you could call it that. He never hurts or bruises me. Just leaves me tingling, like after a massage."
"I suppose that's one way of describing it," Daisy said.
"The ropes are silk. Beautiful. The loveliest pink. And I don't mind the beating with them. Just leaves me tingling like I said. It's the being tied up, even if the knots are loose, that makes my stomach go all queer-like, somehow."
"What?" Daisy shrieked.
"I said he didn't hurt me."
"Oh, no," Daisy said. "No. Just a minute, child. You've knocked the breath out of me."
"Then it is wrong?" Joan whispered.
"No," Daisy said, breathing hard. ''Nothing's wrong. No, I don't mean that. Lots of things are wrong. But not lots of things people think are wrong. Oh, girl, you've got my head over a teakettle until I can't talk straight."
"You mean many frolicsome things are all right, even if some people might not think so?" Joan said anxiously.
"But not ropes." Daisy exploded. "Not ropes, girl. Haven't you any sense in that dandelion top of yours? He might get so excited he pulls the rope too tight and hurts you. Or worse. But this won't last all your life. Then the next one will more than likely be one who knows this man's tastes, and he'll want the same. Only more. And not so gentle. Oh no, girl, oh, no. You take those pretty pearls I see around your neck, and you get what you can for them. You tell him you've got to leave town, you're needed at home, or you've got an engagement with a solo part somewhere any story that fits. But leave, and don't see him again. Ever."
''But I love him, I love him."
"You love life better, don't you?"
"He's gentle. He's kind."
''You ever walk along the Thames of a morning? You ever see them drag the bodies out?"
"I ain't hungry with a bad disease."
"I mean the ones that died violent."
"Them's poor street girls that went with roughs. Or boys. Men do that to their boys more often."
"Any man that likes to hurt, even if it's pretend hurt, has got something wrong with him. And it's like some with drink. They keep wanting it stronger and more of it. I'd sooner walk into a cage with a tiger than into bed with a man like that."
"Oh, Daisy, no. I can't. I can't give him up."
"Hush, girl, hush. My Mrs. Peters is one that win listen at the door. And tell what she hears. After charging me double, she does, saying she and her mister can't hold their heads up out in company because they're not in good service, and there's only the two of them in service here at that. Hush, now. You don't want this all over town."
Poppy froze. Daisy might lecture about people who liked to hurt, but that wouldn't stop her from slapping her own child until her head rang for the rest of the day, if she found her here.
''You think this over." Daisy's skirts rustled as she stood up and swept across the room to open the front door herself. "I'll see you, Joan, when I bring Poppy for her lesson next week. Better, I hope I won't see you, and I'll hear you've left town."
Under the sound of the opening door, Poppy had fled up the stairs. But she had never forgotten that talk. Or that when Daisy took her in for her ballet lesson the next week, somebody said her gentleman had taken Joan to the seashore for a week. After that, nobody ever seemed to hear anything about her again, although she had left some of her best dresses and her fur muffs behind.
Every time Poppy saw Josie and the First Mate, she remembered Joan. The First Mate was a big man, with arms that hung almost to his knees. His face was as squared-off and rough-skinned as if he had been blasted out of a gravel pit. Josie was not as pretty as the other girls, thin as a bedpost, with a dark sallow face and eyes and mouth so big that her nose and little chin hardly showed. Still she had a lilting way of moving, so men were apt to touch their tongues to their lips when they looked at her. The looks of the couple were not what bothered Poppy. Despite all Josie's high collars and long sleeves, she could not always conceal the dark marks circling her neck and wrists. Once, her face was so bruised and swollen nobody could believe she had tripped over a coil of ropes and fallen.
She and the First Mate seemed settled together for the voyage. She was not shifting and changing from one cabin to another like Madame's other girls. Marie was usually with the Purser, though not always, and pretty little Amalie always returned to Maurice during his idle hours when he could find nobody to play cards with him. The other two flitted among the men passengers, but they were so good-natured and discreet they caused no bad feeling. Madame merely shrugged and said the girls deserved a little holiday to spend as they pleased. In San Francisco, they would be tres occupe.
Chapter Eighteen
On sunny days, the respectable ladies made great pretense that the promenade on deck was the high point of their activities. Their most elegant dresses, decorated with velvet, lace, beads, and braid trimmings, elaborate with stiffened taffeta and overdrapes, were brought out in carefully considered rotation. They wore their feathered, flowered, and ribboned hats, carefully matched to their costumes, exactly as if they had been ashore. Their rings, necklaces, and painted fans were on display.
The pretense grew thinner with each passing day. Nobody was surprised at the former curio dealer and his buxom blond friend sharing a cabin since they had come aboard together. The whole ship soon knew that Mlle. Fanny's violin-playing companion was not her cousin but her lover. Those things were expected on long voyages.
The three women going out to join their husbands, the two girls traveling to marry their fiances, and two others going to join their newly prosperous families tried to preserve appearances. They did not flit from man to man like Madame's girls, but the ship was too crowded for even the most discreet slipping in and out of cabins not to be observed.
Only the gray-haired, red-faced Madame Dixmer truly shocked Poppy. She had come aboard with her near-albino daughter, who cowered trembling and terrified in her cabin and only stumbled out, looking around her with dilated, bleary eyes,for meals, then immediately fled back to shelter. Madame Dixmer announced loudly that she had married off her other four daughters successfully, but California was this one's only chance. Plainly, she felt her e
fforts could wait for California, because she had completely abandoned the girl before a week was out. She moved in and spent all her time with a young ex-hussar, a drunkard so unpredictable that gossip said he had accepted his family's offer of a one-way ticket, probably to save himself from something worse than prison, without even the promise of a remittance to follow.
Poppy never joined the daily promenade. She knew she had more and lovelier dresses than any other woman aboard. She opened her trunks, felt the heavy weights in every hem and seam and could not even estimate how many gold napoleons must be sewed into those hundreds of yards of cloth. She locked the trunks again and left them locked. She tied a scarf over her bright hair, removed the stays from two plain blouses so they hung quite limp and, as the weather grew warmer, wore a gray shawl that matched her plain wool skirt. She talked only to Madame and worked at her knitting.
The men were no temptation. She rather liked Maurice, but he and Madame had plainly taken each other in strong dislike, though she did not attempt to interfere with Amalie. The others were a collection of Parisian shopkeepers, journalists, artisans, clerks, and other petty, dull men planning new starts in life in the belief that a geographical change would bring an improvement. When their glances lingered on her, Poppy could look straight through them without a pang of regret.
One day Andy mentioned The Prof again. "He knows eight languages," he reported with awe. "But not much else. He talked too much about Louis Napoleon, so first he lost his job, and then they got him in the middle of the night and put him on this boat."
"He must have talked plain French so people understood him."
"He's used to living alone with his books and his cat. He still worries about his cat," Andy said. "He's down there in steerage sleeping on bare boards, or maybe there's a dirty blanket. There's no fresh air, and he can't eat the food and, oh, Poppy, he's nothing but a shadow."
"He's probably not the only decent man down there."
"But I know The Prof," Andy argued. "Jack and I were talking it over, and we decided Dex put those Spanish books in the box because he wanted you to use them."
"I don't care what Dex wanted."
"The Prof could come up before lunch and give you a lesson on deck," Andy said, as if she had not spoken. "While he's up here, I could find something nice for him from Cook. Oh, Poppy, he's a good old man. He's not going to live even to get around the Horn if we don't do something."
"So you steal for him, and I study?"
"Between us, we can save his life," Andy said, looking his most angelic.
That would be another barrier between her and the promenading gentlemen. It could not be duller than knitting.
So each day before lunch, The Prof gave Poppy a Spanish lesson. Then, because Madame decided it would be most useful in her new house, the three tried to converse in Spanish, with Madame laboring hard to master genteel salutations, remarks about the weather, and, most especially, numbers, which she found amazingly simple. Andy always found a roll and some cheese or a chicken wing for The Prof before he went back to steerage.
With the fine weather, Andy brought their luncheon plates up on deck. Afterwards, Madame instructed in knitting. The scarf, which was almost straight and not too lumpy, was getting quite long. Madame promised Poppy would finish that and knit her first sock before they rounded the Horn. Poppy did wonder what kind of horn it was, that a ship could sail around it, but she refused to display her ignorance to Madame.
Jack guessed, and he explained one day when a squall kept Poppy in the cabin. He selected one of the last of the fine red apples and took his knife in his other hand.
"Andy says you told him Mexico was in South America. Let me show you something. Now this apple is the world, and we left from France, here, sailing across the Atlantic about here." With his knife, he drew a short line around the apple. "That's the coast of the United States. If we landed there, you could walk to California. It's only three thousand miles of plains, mountains, and deserts,an easy little trip, if you don't meet some Indians or a flood or a blizzard or get lost or robbed of your supplies."
"Not everybody walks. I don't believe it."
"I think there is a railroad, there in the east , for a ways," Jack admitted. "And there are river boats and horses. But it's still three thousand miles." His knife went back, and he carved down from the cross line. "So we sail this way. Now over here is Mexico, and you'll notice it's in Central America. Then the coast dips clear in here before it widens out again to South America. It isn't far by land across that narrow spot to the Pacific, by water or horse or feet again. Only that's jungle, and if you don't get lost or meet up with a snake or drown in the river, there's the fever, and that's a killer."
"So we stay on the boat."
"Right. Now here's South America, curving around like this, and we're going to put in at Rio for supplies. Then it's down this way and around the Horn. At least, I hope the Captain has the sense to go around the Horn and not to try the Strait of Magellan, even though, with bad weather, it can take a month to round the Horn. Sometimes you can get through the Strait, which you can see is closer and shorter, in days. But if a storm comes up in the Strait, that's the end of you, and if you get calmed in, it can take twice the time of the Horn. One route or the other, we're around and into the Pacific and on our way to California." He drew another swooping line up, in, and up again. "There we are. With a few stops on the way, probably, but those should be rather pleasant. That's all there is to it." He slashed the apple in two and handed half to Poppy.
"I hear all kinds of things about San Francisco," Poppy said miserably. "The ladies dress more extravagantly than in Paris. The place is full of cutthroats and men starving. You can drown in the mud on the streets. The shop counters are covered with gold dust, and you can just scoop up a handful. People live in the street, and it's like a fair. Indians walk the streets. Spanish families live like kings in palaces on thousands of acres, and they ride around with saddles made of pure silver and gold. Only if they're not Spanish palaces, the houses are made of canvas and are always burning up. They have a fine theater. Food is so scarce you can pay a dollar for a potato or starve. All those things can't be true."
"Are you sure?" Jack asked. "We have a nice Yankee kid in the forecastle. He's been there, and he says there's never been anything like it. He jumped ship in China to go to the gold fields. Only he got on a whaler instead, and by the time he jumped that one, he got to California at the wrong season, so he signed on a coaster up to Oregon. From there he went to France, and now he's hoping to pick up a clipper with a Yankee skipper when we reach San Francisco so he can get back to Maine."
"I thought you said he wanted to go to the gold fields?"
"He does seem easily distracted," Jack admitted. "I think he plans to try to make his fortune while he waits to sign on with a skipper he likes."
"So he's not an adventurer, he's a sailor."
"A good one and a good man. He's had some hard experiences. Like this ship. He says on some of those clippers the captains have their wives with them, with all the comforts of home, down to pianos and prayer meetings every night. And make themselves rich in the China trade while they're at it. Even if they never touch the opium. You know I'd like to make one trip on a ship like that."
"Do clippers take passengers? To take us home?"
"Let's arrive before we leave again."
Poppy finished the scarf, and Madame started her on a sock. She insisted it was more useful than a mitten. The Prof admitted his lisping Spanish pronunciation was Castilian, which was not spoken in all parts of Spain, but he thought it was what the aristocrats in Mexico spoke.
Then on a warm, sunny day when the wool clung and tangled in her damp hands, Poppy started to avert her eyes from Josie and the First Mate swaggering past, seeming to flaunt themselves more than usual, and suddenly she froze. Her hands jerked, and all the stitches went.
Madame clicked her tongue and took it from Poppy's hands. "Now you'll only have to start
all over again." Ripping, she glanced up and said idly, "That's a hand-some stole on Josie. The Mate must start each voyage prepared with presents for a lady."
"Yes," Poppy said numbly.
"Cost him a pretty penny," Madame said and shook her head. "Oh, this is a tangle, and I don't want to waste the wool."
Poppy was beyond answering that. Passing them again, preening her head and looking out of the comers of her eyes, daring Poppy to say anything, Josie tossed one end of the stole over her shoulder. She started with surprise as it struck her back a small blow.
Poppy felt herself turn dead white and ducked her head. The heavy, blue-satin stole, of a material that took on subtle peacock tones of green and purple in the light, with the heavy, knotted silk fringe eighteen inches long on each end, was hers! She had worn it only once.
Josie had been in her trunks. And she was so sure of the First Mate's protection, she was daring Poppy to say anything. That was bad. .
