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Poppy: The Story of a South African Girl

by Cynthia Stockley · English · Gutenberg #36138 · 753,603 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Poppy: The Story of a South African Girl

Author: Cynthia Stockley


        
Release date: May 18, 2011 [eBook #36138]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36138

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POPPY: THE STORY OF A SOUTH AFRICAN GIRL ***




Produced by David Garcia, Matthew Wheaton and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net







  [Illustration: "IN HIS LOOMING ABOUT THE ROOM HE HAD STOPPED DEAD
  BEFORE WATTS'S PICTURE 'HOPE' OVER THE MANTELPIECE"

  From the painting by G. F. Watts, R.A.

  (_See p. 336_)]




  POPPY


  THE STORY OF A
  SOUTH AFRICAN GIRL

  BY

  CYNTHIA STOCKLEY


  G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
  NEW YORK AND LONDON
  The Knickerbocker Press
  1910


  Published, March, 1910
  Reprinted, March, 1910; May, 1910
  July, 1910 (twice); August, 1910
  September, 1910; October, 1910


  The Knickerbocker Press, New York



  To
  Em




PART I


  "... and some do say of poppies that they be the tears of the moon
  shed in a land beyond the seas: and that they do bring forgetfulness
  and freedom from pain."

                                     (_From an old Irish Legend_.)




POPPY


Nothing more unlike a gladsome poppy of the field was ever seen than
Poppy Destin, aged nine, washing a pile of dirty plates at the kitchen
table.

Pale as a witch, the only red about her was where she dug her teeth into
her lips. Her light lilac-coloured eyes were fierce with anger and
disgust. Her hair hung in long black streaks over her shoulders, and her
dark hands, thin and bony as bird's claws, were each decorated with a
bracelet of greeny-yellowy grease.

There had been curry for dinner. Horrible yellow rings floated on the
top of the water in the _skottel_ and Poppy hated to put her hands into
it.

She was hating her work more than usual that day because she was hungry
as well as angry. She had slapped her little cousin Georgie for throwing
a heavy hammer at her which had cut a gash in her leg; and her
punishment for this crime had been two stinging boxes on the ear and
sentence to go without food all day. Fortunately the incident had
occurred after breakfast.

Once or twice she looked longingly at the scraps on the plates, but she
did not touch them, because her aunt had eaten from one and she was not
sure which, and she knew that to eat from anything her aunt had touched
would choke her.

So she threw the scraps to Nick the black cat, under the kitchen table,
and went on hating her aunt, and washing up the plates. She would have
liked to smash each plate on the floor as she took it out of the water,
and to have thrown all the greasy water over the freshly-scrubbed white
shelves and dresser. And she would have done it too, only that she did
not like boxes on the ear.

Presently she tried to fill her bitter little heart and her empty little
stomach by going on with the story inside her head. She always had a
story going on inside her head, and it was always about just two
people--a beautiful lady and a man with a face like Lancelot. She used
to begin at the end to make sure they should be quite happy, and when
she had married them and they were living happily "ever after," she
would go back to the beginning--how they met and all the sad things they
had to go through before they could be married. Afterwards she would
make a little song about them.

That day she had a heroine with red gold hair for the first time,
because she had seen such a beautiful red-gold-haired lady in the street
the day before, dressed in brown holland with a brown hat trimmed with
pale green leaves. Poppy dressed her heroine in the same fashion,
instead of the usual white velvet with a long train and a wreath of
white roses resting on her hair. Just as Lancelot was telling the
heroine that her eyes were as beautiful as brown wine, a harsh voice
called out from the dining-room:

"Porpie! Haven't you done that washing-up yet? Make haste there! You
know you got to smear the kitchen before you clean yourself and take the
children up to the Kopje."

Poppy gritted her teeth and furious tears came into her eyes; her aunt's
voice always seemed to scrape something inside her head and make it
ache; also, she detested taking the children up to the Kopje. It was
such a long way to carry Bobby--all up Fountain Street in the broiling
sun--and she _had_ to carry him, because if she put him into the pram
with his twin, Tommy, they kicked each other and screamed, and when the
children screamed, Aunt Lena always got to hear of it and boxed Poppy's
ears for ill-treating them.

Listlessly she dried the plates and stuck them up in lines on the
dresser, soaked the _fadook_ and washed all round the edges of the bowl,
making the water swirl round and round so that the grease would not
settle again, then, while the water moved swiftly, carried the basin to
the back door and emptied it with a great "swash" into the yard. The
fowls flew shrieking in every direction and the water ran down in little
rivers to where old Sara was doing some washing under the shade of the
biggest acacia tree. When the little stream reached her bare black feet
she clicked her teeth, crying, "Aah," and moved round to the other side
of the stones on which she banged the clothes to make them white.

Poppy dried her basin out with the _fadook_, wiped the table dry, and
put the bowl upside down upon it. Then she went into the yard again and
approached an old pail which stood in the forage-house. It was full of
an atrocious mess, slimy and thick, giving out a pungent odour that made
her nose wrinkle in disgust. Nevertheless she took it up and carried it
down to old Sara to get some soapy water. The old Basuto in her red
_kop-dook_, rolled the whites of her eyes sympathetically and muttered
in her native tongue as she watched Poppy stir the green slime with a
stick. She was sorry for the child. She knew it was Kaffir's work to
smear floors. Black hands are hard, and the little thorns and stones to
be found in the wet cow-dung do not hurt them; neither does the pungent
smell disgust black noses.

"But the _old missis_ had strange ways! Clk! It seemed she liked the
_klein-missis_ to do Kaffir's work!" Old Sara shrugged her fat, wobbly
shoulders, and flopped over her wash-tub once more.

Poppy went back to the kitchen. She had swept it just before dinner, now
she sprinkled it heavily with water, then kneeling down on a folded sack
beside the bucket, she rolled up her sleeves, closed her eyes, and
plunged her hands into the sickening mess. Quickly she withdrew them,
flinging two handfuls on to the floor and began to smear it with the
flat of her right hand.

Kitchens and verandahs (or stoeps) in old-fashioned South African houses
always have what are called "mud floors," which means that they are just
mother-earth with all the stones picked out and the surface kept smooth
and level by constant smearing in or pasting on of wet cow-dung once or
twice a week. Smearing is a disgusting business, but joy comes after.
When freshly dry the floor looks cool and green and fresh, and no longer
does the _mis_ smell vilely; rather, there is a soft odour of grasses
and flowers, as though some stray veldt wind had blown through the room.

But Poppy had no time to enjoy the result of her labour. After she had
spread sacks upon the floor to prevent feet from marking her work until
it was dry, she stopped for a moment to dig out a thorn from her thumb
with a needle, but immediately her aunt's menacing voice could be heard
from the front stoep, where now she sat drinking her after-dinner cup of
coffee with her husband, admonishing the slowness of Poppy's
proceedings, and demanding that she should "makaste."

Poppy ran into the bedroom which she shared with her two elder cousins,
and cleaned herself of all traces of her recent occupation. Later she
appeared on the front stoep, in a print pinafore over her grey linsey
dress, and an old straw hat much bitten at the edges shading her pale
fierce little face.

"My word, that child looks more like an Irish Fenian every day!" was her
aunt's agreeable greeting.

Weak, good-looking "Uncle Bob," who was really no more than a second
cousin of Poppy's, laughed in a deprecating kind of way. He was cutting
a twist of tobacco from a great roll that hung drying from the stoep
roof.

"Och, you're always going on at the girl, Lena!"

"And good cause I have," retorted Mrs. Kennedy. "Stand still, Ina, while
I tie your cappie."

Poppy said nothing, but if having black murder in your heart makes you a
Fenian, she knew that she was one.

Silently she assisted her aunt to put their pinafores upon the
struggling twins, and to array Ina in her cape and bib--all starched to
stand about them like boards, to their everlasting misery and
discomfort. Mrs. Kennedy gloated upon the fact that all the neighbours
said, "How beautifully kept Mrs. Kennedy's children are!"

At last Tommy was in the pram; Bobby pranced astride on Poppy's small
bony hip, and Ina, who was just four, clung toddling to her skirt. Thus
Poppy set forth, pushing the pram before her.

"And mind you bring them in before sun-down, and don't let them sit on
the damp grass--" was Mrs. Kennedy's last word shouted up the street
after the procession.

A little lane lined with syringa trees led from the house and was shady
and sweet to loiter in, but Fountain Street glared and blazed under the
afternoon sun. Poppy was pale and sadly-coloured as some strange
cellar-plant when at last she brought her charges to a halt by the
Kopje. She put Bobby down from her hip with a bump, tilted the pram and
let Tommy scramble out the best way he could, then sat down on a rock
and covered her face with her hands.

Bobby was a heavy-weight, and though she changed him from one hip to
another all the way up the street, she never got to the Kopje without a
pain in her stomach and a feeling of deathly sickness.

Nearly all the children of the town came to the Kopje in the afternoons.
It was only a slight hill, but it had bushes and clumps of mimosa trees,
and little quarried-out holes and masses of rocks, and other fascinating
features dear to children. The Kaffir-girl nurses squatted under the
trees jabbering amongst themselves, and the children congregated in
small herds. Poppy was the only white-girl nurse to be seen. She had a
little circle of trees and stones where she always took her brood, and
if she found anyone else in possession, she threw stones at them until
they retreated.

When she had spread a rug for them to sit on, the children were left to
amuse themselves in whatsoever fashion seemed good unto them. Poppy sat
dreaming to herself, wrapped in the veils of poetry and romance. Near
the Kopje was St. Michael's, a high school for girls kept by an English
sisterhood, and when Poppy and her brood reached their haunt before
three o'clock, she would see all the girls coming out of the gates,
passing by in their nice dresses and hats with bags of books in their
hands. They would stare at Poppy, and sometimes laugh; then the pain in
her stomach would come into her throat and almost choke her. No one ever
spoke to her. They knew quite well who she was, but she did Kaffir's
work, and her clothes were old and ugly, and she was altogether a person
to be despised and laughed at.

But sometimes a little ray of human friendliness would break through the
hedge of snobbery. On this summer day a girl called Edie Wyllie, who
used to sit next to her in Sunday-school, called out in quite a jolly
way as she passed:

"Hullo, Poppy Destin!"

But her sister pulled at her arm at once and rebuked her.

"Edie! You know mother doesn't let us speak to Poppy Destin."

"Pooh!" called out Poppy with the utmost scorn and derision. "Who wants
to speak to you? I hate you."

She made fearful faces at them; but when they had all gone past, she
rocked on her stone and wept.

"I hate them! I hate them!" she sobbed. "And I hate God! God is a
beast."

Ina stood by and listened, with her pinafore in her mouth.

"I'll tell mother that, what you say," she remarked gravely.

"'Tell-tale-tit, your tongue shall be slit.' Go away from me, else I'll
beat you," shouted Poppy, and Ina ran for her life and hid behind some
rocks. Poppy continued her weeping, dry-eyed now, but sobbing
spasmodically.

Suddenly a voice behind her!

"What's the matter little girl?"

Turning round she saw that the beauteous lady in the holland dress was
sitting on a stone opposite her, smiling kindly. Her hair was like
sovereigns shining in the sunlight, Poppy thought.

"Do tell me what is the matter!"

"Nothing's the matter," said Poppy defiantly.

The lady laughed long and merrily as though she found something
refreshing in the child's sulky misery.

"Well, but how silly of you to cry and make your eyes red for nothing!
You've got such pretty eyes, too!"

Poppy stared at her, gasping.

"Oh! If I only thought I had pretty eyes--" she said breathlessly.

"Well, you have indeed. And they are most uncommon too--just the colour
of lilac, and 'put in with a smutty finger' like an Irish girl's. Are
you Irish?"

Poppy was about to inform her that she was a Fenian, but she thought
better of it.

"I was born here in Bloemfontein," she answered.

"Well, perhaps your mother came from Ireland, for you have _quite_ an
Irish face: only you're so thin, and you look so cross--are you?"

"Yes. I am always cross. I hate everybody."

"Good heavens! What a little savage! but you shouldn't. It makes one so
ugly to hate."

"Does it?" Eagerly. "Do you think if I was never cross I'd get
beautiful?"

"You are much more likely to," said the other encouragingly, thinking in
the meantime that nothing could ever make harmonious and beautiful that
small tormented face.

"Is that why you are so beautiful?" was the next question.

The beauty smiled: a little complacently perhaps.

"I expect so. I am never cross and never unhappy, and I never mean to
let anyone make me so." She opened her brown holland sunshade lined with
sea-green silk and got up to go.

"Now be sure and remember that," she said pleasantly. "Never cry, never
be unhappy, never hate anyone, and never be cross and--you'll see how
beautiful you'll become."

"Oh, I will, I will," cried Poppy ardently.

"Now I must go," said the beautiful one. "I want to take one last walk
round your pretty Bloemfontein, because I am going back to Cape Town
to-morrow."

"Have you any little girls in Cape Town?" asked Poppy, wishing to detain
her a little longer. She laughed at that.

"You funny child! Why I'm not even married. But I'm going to be, and to
the most fascinating man in Africa."

"Is his name Lancelot?"

"No. His name is Nick Capron. How old are you, child?"

"Nine."

"Only nine! You look about thirteen, you poor little thing. Well,
good-bye, I must really go."

"Good-bye; and thank you so much for speaking to me," Poppy stammered.
She felt that she could adore the beautiful study in brown holland, who
only laughed at her again and went on her way.

But Poppy, sitting on her rock had a gleam of hope and happiness; for at
last she knew the secret of being beautiful; _and_--it had been told
her--her eyes were pretty.

She sat thinking for a long time and making resolutions. She even
determined to strive to hate Aunt Lena less. Minor resolutions were--not
to be unkind to the children when they made her angry and told tales on
her; not to quarrel with her two elder cousins, Clara and Emily; not to
scratch them and beat them with her fists when they called her
_Foelstruis_,[1] because her legs were so long and thin; not to fly into
awful rages in which she could not speak, only shake all over and bite
her hands and lips till the blood came; not to sit and think of Aunt
Lena's ways until a red curtain came down before her eyes and her heart
felt like a red-hot coal burning her to death.

  [1] Ostrich.

These were a few of the terrible obstacles in the path to beauty which
she set herself to overcome. There were other arts, too, she would
practise to the same end. She would brush her hair until it sprang into
waves, even as the hair of the beautiful one in brown. She would cut her
eyelashes, as Clara did, to make them thick and long. She would run and
jump, even when she was tired, to make her body strong and her cheeks
pink. She would walk upright, even when she had the pain in her stomach,
so that she might grow tall and graceful. Furthermore, she would find
out from old Sara where that wonderful milky cactus grew, which the
young Basuto girls gathered and rubbed upon their breasts in the
moonlight to make them grow round and firm as young apples.

Last, but most important of all, she evolved from her dreamings and
devisings a promise to herself that she would never, _never_ do mean
things, for meanness she surely knew to be the friend of hideousness.
Meanness showed in the face. Could not anyone see it in Aunt Lena's
face? The traces of mean thoughts and deeds showed in the narrow space
between her eyebrows, in the specks in her pale eyes, were brushed into
her sleek, putty-coloured hair and crinkled her coarse thick hands. If
you only looked at the freckles and loose skin all round her wrists, her
fat fingers and the way her ears stuck out, you must see how cruel and
hateful she could be, thought Poppy. Whereupon, forgetting the greatest
of her resolutions in a moment, she fell to hating her Aunt Lena again
with a particular malignancy. But presently she noticed that the trees
were casting long giant shadows towards the town, pansy-coloured clouds
were in the sky, and a certain dewiness had come into the air. Hastily
collecting the children she departed with them. In the same order as
they came, they returned home down the long white street.

       *       *       *       *       *

But it was hard in the house of Aunt Lena Kennedy to attain beauty
through virtue.

On Saturdays Poppy even forgot that she had ever made resolutions to
that end. Upon that day of days, Mrs. Kennedy subjected her house and
all that therein was to a scrubbing in which there was no niggardliness
of what she termed "elbow grease." Poppy was not exempt; her turn came
at ten o'clock at night; and that was the hour of shame and rage for
Poppy. When all the rest of the children were comfortably in bed,
sucking their weekly supply of _lekkers_, Mrs. Kennedy would roll up her
sleeves and approach in a workmanlike manner the big pan-bath in the
middle of the kitchen, wherein stood Poppy, lank, thin-limbed, and
trembling--but not with cold--under the scrutiny of the speckled eyes
she hated so well.

"Ah! you bad-tempered little cat!" was the usual preliminary; "why can't
you be grateful to me for taking the trouble to keep you clean? It isn't
every aunt by marriage who would do it, I can tell you. I suppose you'd
like to go about with the dirt ingrained in you! What are you shivering
and cringing like that for? Are you ashamed of your own body?"

"It is horrible to be naked, aunt," she would retort, striving to keep
tears from bursting forth and full of apprehension that someone might
come into the wide-open kitchen doors.

"Horrible! what's horrible about it, I'd like to know, except in your
own nasty little mind? A body like a _spring-kaan_,[2] that's what
you've got ... and don't want me to see it, I suppose! Dirty pride! the
ugliest child _I've_ ever seen ... the longest legs ... and the
skinniest arms ... look what nice fat arms Clara and Emily's got! ...
one would think you never got enough to eat ... pass me that other arm."

  [2] Grasshopper.

With a rough flannel and blue mottled soap she scoured Poppy's body and
face as if it had been the face of a rock; scrubbing and rubbing until
the skin crackled like a fire beneath her vigorous hand. Later came a
scraping down with a bath towel made of something of the same fibre as a
door-mat. At last Poppy crept to her bed, her eyes like pin-points in
her head from the scalding of the strong soap; her hair strained back
from her sore, glazed face and plaited as tightly as possible into two
pig-tails behind her ears.

On such nights she was far enough from the beauty she so much coveted.
To herself she appeared hideous--_hideous_. It gave her pain to look at
herself in the glass. And she believed that her aunt made her hideous
with malignant intent. Her cousins had their hair loosely plaited, and
it hung nicely over their faces, and they had frills to their
nightgowns. Poppy's nightgown of unbleached calico had a tight narrow
neck-band that nearly strangled her when buttoned with a linen button
the size of a small saucer.

Those were the nights when a thousand devils ate at her heart and fought
within her, and she knew she could never be beautiful. She would lie
awake for hours, just to loathe her aunt and concoct tortures for her.
In imagination she cut slits in that hated body and filled them with
salt and mustard, or anything that would burn; dug sharp knives into the
cruel heart; saw the narrow hard face lying on the floor and beat into
it with a hammer until it was red, red, red--and everything was red.

"Scorpion! Scorpion!" she would rave.

Worn out at last and half asleep she would choke and groan and bite her
pillow, thinking she had her enemy under her hands, until her cousins in
their big bed across the room would call out:

"Ma! I wish you would come and speak to Miss Poppy here. She's calling
you a 'scorpion'!"

The chances were that Mrs. Kennedy, in no pleasant temper after all her
exertions, would fly into the room, tear down the bedclothes, and
administer two or three stinging slaps on Poppy's bare body, crying out
upon her for an ungrateful, vile-tempered little fagot.

"You want a _sjambok_ round you, that's what you want, my lady, and
you'll get it one of these days. I shan't go on with you in this patient
way for ever."

"I won't have a _sjambok_ used on a child in my house," Uncle Bob would
mutter in the dining-room, asserting himself in this one matter at
least.

But Clara and Emily would jeer from their beds, calling her _Miss_ Poppy
in fine derision.

"_Now_ you've got it! How did you like that, hey? _Lekker_, hey?"

Some time after midnight Poppy would weep herself to sleep.

       *       *       *       *       *

Once Poppy used to go to St. Gabriel's Infant School, where she had
learned to read and write; but when the twins arrived in the world, Aunt
Lena could no longer spare her from home, and her education languished
for three years. But at last there came a letter from her god-mother in
Port Elizabeth saying that she had sent five pounds to St. Michael's
Home, asking the Sisters to give Poppy as much education as possible for
that sum.

Poppy was wild with delight. It had been beyond her wildest dreams to go
to St. Michael's and learn all sorts of wonderful things with all the
_grand_ children of Bloemfontein. She could not believe that such joy
was to be hers. Mrs. Kennedy made great objections to the scheme, and
seemed likely to get her way until her husband took the trouble to
insist. So Poppy went off one morning full of hope and high ambition, in
a clean, very stiffly starched overall of faded galatea, her old straw
hat freshly decorated with a yellow pugaree that hung in long tails down
her back.

But school was only the beginning of a fresh era of misery. The girls
stared at her old boots and sneered at her pugaree, and no one would be
friends with her because she wore white cotton stockings, which were
only sixpence a pair, and sold to Kaffir girls to wear on Sundays.

Poppy gave back sneer for sneer and taunt for taunt with great
versatility; but her heart was sometimes near bursting under the galatea
overall. It seemed to her that even the teachers despised her because of
her shabbiness and ugliness, and that when she worked hard at her
lessons she got less praise than the pretty girls. "Yes! it's because
I'm ugly, and everything I wear is ugly," she whispered to herself as
she walked home alone every day, hurrying because she knew the children
would be dressed and ready, waiting to be taken to the Kopje as soon as
she had bolted her cold dinner. Clara's and Emily's dinner was always
kept hot. They went to the Dames' Institute, another school of some
importance where all the nice high Dutch Boers sent their children: and
they got home at two o'clock. Mrs. Kennedy said she would keep no dinner
hot later than that hour, so that Poppy, arriving at three, found her
stewed mutton cold in a dish of fatty gravy, and sometimes a bit of cold
suet pudding. She would always have "filled up" contentedly enough with
bread, but Mrs. Kennedy grumbled when too much bread was eaten, as she
only baked once a week.

Sometimes, when Poppy had been very unhappy at school, she used to stop
at the Kopje instead of hurrying home, so that she could cry without
being spied on by Ina or the twins. She would lie down among the rocks
and the kind green leaves, and moan and cry out against God and
everybody in the world. Her little songs and stories seemed to have died
in her heart and been buried. She would call out to God that He _might_
have let her have _something_--a kind mother, or golden hair, or brains,
or a white skin, or a happy home, or _something_; it wouldn't have hurt
_Him_, and it would have made all the difference to her. Later she
passed from argument to anger and from anger to frenzy; shouting at the
sky because she was ugly and poor and horrible within as well as
without, so that no one loved her and she hated everyone.

At last, tired out, hopeless, sick with bitter crying, she would lay her
head against an old mimosa tree that had a curve in its trunk like the
curve of a mother's arm, and the soft odour of the fluffy round yellow
blossoms would steal over her. Later, a land of peace and strength
seemed to come out of the tree to her, and she would have courage to get
up and go on her way.

One of the teachers, Miss Briggs, was always scolding her about her
hands. She would draw the attention of the whole class to them, covering
Poppy with shame. They were not big hands like Clara's and Emily's but
they were rough and coarse with housework and through being continually
in the water washing stockings and handkerchiefs and plates; and in the
winter they got horribly chapped, with blood marks all over them, so
that the teachers couldn't bear to see them and the girls used to say
"Sis!" when she reached for anything. Her nails, too, were often untidy,
and her hair. She never had time in the mornings to give it more than
just one brush and tie it back in her neck, and she used to have to
clean her nails with a pin or a mimosa thorn while she was hurrying to
school, learning her lessons on the way. It was the only time she had to
learn them, except in the afternoons when she took the children out. If
they were good and would stay happy, she could get out her books from
under the pram seat and learn; but almost immediately Ina would want to
be played with, or Georgie would fall down and hurt himself and whimper
in her arms for half an hour. The fact was that the children had been
brought up to believe that Poppy was in the world entirely for their
comfort and convenience, and they could not bear to see her doing
anything that was not for them.

"I'll tell ma," was their parrot cry: and that meant boxes on the ear.

"I up with my hand" was a favourite phrase of Aunt Lena's.

In the evenings Ina must always be sung to sleep, and sometimes would
not go off for more than an hour. Then Mrs. Kennedy would say briskly:

"Now get your lessons done, Porpie!"

But by then Poppy's head would be aching and her eyes would hardly keep
open, and what she did learn would not stay in her head until the next
morning.

And after all, none of the teachers seemed to care much whether she
learned them or not. If by accident she did them well, she got no
praise; if she did them ill she was scolded and the lesson was
"returned"--that meant being kept in on Friday afternoons until the
lesson had been learnt or rewritten. But when Friday afternoon came,
Poppy could not stay; there were the children to be taken out, and her
ears would be boxed if she were too late to do that; she would get no
tea, and the whole house would be thoroughly upset. So the "returned"
lessons had to go to the wall. She would slink home when supposed to be
taking recreation in the play-ground before the "returned" bell rang.
That meant bad conduct marks, unpopularity with the teachers, and as the
deserted Fridays mounted up--all hope lost of gaining a prize. After a
while the teachers said she was incorrigible, and gave her no more
attention.

"I wonder you bother to come to school at all, Poppy," was the favourite
gibe of Miss Briggs.

When examination days came she did badly, except in history and
geography, which she liked and found easy.

Break-up day was the worst of all.

The girls all came in their pretty soft white frocks and looked sweet.
Only Poppy was ugly, in a pique frock, starched like a board, her hair
frizzed out in a bush, her pale face looking yellow and sullen against
the over-blued white dress; her long legs and her narrow feet longer and
narrower than ever in white stockings and elastic-sided boots.

There was never any prize for her.

She knew there never would be. She used to keep saying inside herself:

"_Of course_ there isn't a prize for you"; and yet she was so silly,
her ears were cracking and straining all the time to hear her name read
out of the list. And her heart used to feel like a stone when the list
came to an end without her name being called; and her pale face would be
strangely red and burning like fire. Sometimes a little extra piece
would be read, that Poppy Destin's historical essay or geography paper
was the best, but the prize had been passed on to the second best on
account of this girl's disobedience, untidiness, and the number of
undone returned lessons against her name. Then everybody would look at
Poppy Destin, and her heart would stop so still that she believed she
must fall down dead in one minute.

But the entertainment would go on. The girls fetched their prizes from
the table covered with lovely books, and curtseyed to Lady Brand, who
spoke and smiled to each one of them. Afterwards would come the
recitations and songs that everyone joined in but Poppy. She had been
turned out of the singing-class because she sang off the key. Also,
Sister Anna said, she moaned instead of singing; though Poppy was aware
that she had lovely tunes going on inside her head all the time. It must
have been true about the moaning, for Ina used to say when Poppy sang to
her at nights:

"Your songs always sound just's if you are crying all the time, Poppy."

She loved music, but was not allowed to learn it. Clara learned and
Emily could have if she had liked, but Aunt Lena said she couldn't
afford those "frills" for Poppy. Once a lady named Mrs. Dale offered to
teach the child if she could be spared two afternoons a week, and Poppy
begged her uncle to let her go. He shook his head.

"You must ask your aunt if she can spare you, Poppy."

"Spare her!" shrieked Mrs. Kennedy. "Isn't she away all day now? What
help do I get from her, I'd like to know? and now she wants to go
gadding off in the afternoons, the only time she can be of a little use
to take the children off my hands. Music indeed! Gadding with Nellie
Dale is more like it."

"Only twice a week, uncle," pleaded Poppy.

"My girl, you must do what your aunt thinks best. Can't you spare her
two afternoons a week, Lena?"

"Oh, let her go ... fine musician she'll make, _I'm_ sure," said that
lady. And for two weeks Poppy went. Then Mrs. Kennedy, storming and
raving, refused to let her go again. She missed her slave; so Poppy went
back to the old life of weariness; but she had something new to think
over. Mrs. Dale had known her mother quite well, and remembered Poppy as
a baby.

"You were a sweet little thing," she said. "So beautifully kept, and the
apple of your mother's eye."

This was most wonderful and shining news. Any illusions Poppy might have
had about her mother had long since been scattered by such remarks from
her aunt as:

"Your mother ought to be alive. She'd have skinned you for your
dirtiness--your deceit, your laziness" (whatever the crime might be).

Or:

"It's a good thing your mother's lying cold in her grave, my girl--she
would have had murder on her soul if she had had _you_ to deal with."

Now, to hear that her mother had been a gentle and kind woman, not
beautiful, but with wonderful Irish eyes and "a laugh like a bird's
song!"

"Clever, too," said Mrs. Dale. "Though she was only a poor Irish girl
and came out here with the emigrants, she had a lot of learning, and had
read more books than anyone in Bloemfontein. I think the priests must
have educated her."

"But why has no one ever told me before?" asked Poppy in amazement. "No
one speaks of her, or of my father, to me! Why?"

Mrs. Dale shook her gentle head.

"Ah well, my dear, she's at rest now and your wild Irish father too. Her
heart broke when he broke his neck somewhere down on the diamond
diggings, and she didn't want to live any longer, even for you--her
Poppy-flower she always called you. One day, when I went to see her, she
said to me, looking at you with those eyes of hers that were like dewy
flowers: 'Perhaps my little Poppy-flower will get some joy out of life,
Mrs. Dale. It can't be for nothing that Joe and I have loved each other
so much. It must bring some gift to the child.' And she told me that the
reason she had called you Poppy was that in Ireland they have a saying
that poppies bring forgetfulness and freedom from pain; but then she
took to weeping, that weeping that is like lost melodies, and that only
the Irishry know.

"'But I see,' she wailed, 'that she's marked out for sorrow--I see it--I
see it.' And three nights after that she died."

This was Mrs. Dale's story. Poppy treasured it in her heart with the
verbal picture of her mother, "eyes like a dewy morning, black, black
hair, and a beautiful swaying walk."

"It must have been like hearing one of those old Irish melodies played
on a harp, to see her walk along the street," was the thought Poppy
evolved from Mrs. Dale's description.

After that she never found life quite unlovely again. But she longed to
hear more, and whenever she could, even at the risk of curses and blows,
she would steal to kind Mrs. Dale for another word. How ardently she
wished her mother had lived. How unutterably beautiful to be called
Poppy-flower! instead of _Porpie_! Her mother would have understood,
too, the love and craving for books which had seized her since she had
more learning. She would not have been obliged to creep into the fowls'
_hok_ or the forage-house when she wanted to read some book she had
borrowed or found lying about the house, or the old Tennyson which she
had rescued from the ash-heap one day and kept hidden under the
chaff-bags in the forage-house.

"There's that Porpie with a book again!" was her aunt's outraged cry.
"Lazy young huzzy! For ever squatting with her nose poked into a book
reading some wickedness or foolishness I'll be bound.... Anything rather
than be helpful ... no wonder your face is yellow and green, miss ...
sitting with your back crooked up instead of running about or doing some
housework ... more to your credit if you got a duster and polished the
dining-room table or mended that hole in the leg of your stocking." Oh,
the thousands of uninteresting things there are to be done in the world!
thought Poppy. The dusters and damnations of life!

       *       *       *       *       *

She used to long to be taken ill so that she might have a rest in bed
and be able at last to read as much as she liked. But when she broke her
arm she was too ill to care even about reading, and when she got scarlet
fever she could not really enjoy herself, for Ina sickened of it too,
and was put into bed with her, and was so fretful, always crying unless
she was told stories or sung to. So they got better together and _that_
was over.

Before she was twelve Poppy's schooldays came to an end. The five
sovereigns had been spent and there was no more to come. Wasted money,
Mrs. Kennedy said, and wrote and told the god-mother so. The fact that
never a single prize had been won was damning evidence that the culprit
was both idle and a dunce. It was quite true that she had learnt
nothing much in the way of lessons. History and geography or anything
with a story in it, or poetry, were the only things that interested her.
Grammar and arithmetic were nothing but stumbling-blocks in her path,
though she never spoke bad grammar, being quick to detect the difference
in the language of her teachers and that of her aunt, and profiting by
it, and she learned to use her voice as they did too--softly and
low--never speaking the half-Dutch, half-English patter used by Mrs.
Kennedy and her children to the accompaniment of "Och, what?" "Hey?" and
"Sis!" Her Uncle Bob had a sweet way of turning his words in his lips,
which made even the kitchen-Dutch pleasant to the ear, and with great
delight Poppy discovered one day that she also had this trick. Not for
years however, did she realise that this was Ireland in her tongue; her
country's way of marking Bob Kennedy and Poppy Destin as her own, in
spite of Africa.

Her ear was fine for beautiful sounds and her aunt's voice scraped the
inside of her head more and more as time went on, and whenever the
latter dropped an "h" Poppy picked it up and stored it in that dark
inner cupboard of hers where was kept all scorn and contempt.

She never made a remark herself without _thinking_ it first and deciding
how it was going to sound, so afraid was she of getting to speak like
her aunt. Often she used to practise talking, or recite to herself when
she thought no one was listening, but when overheard, fresh sneers were
thrown at her.

"Was she going daft then? ... speaking to herself like a crazy
Hottentot ... concocting impudence, no doubt ... the lunatic asylum
was _her_ place ... and don't let me hear you again, my lady, or I'll
up with my hand ... etc."

One day Ina fell very ill, and Mrs. Kennedy sent a messenger flying for
the doctor. When he came he shook his head gravely, and after a week or
two announced that the child had dropsy. It sometimes followed on
scarlet fever, he said ... especially if the child had taken cold ...
probably she had been sitting on the damp ground. At once Mrs. Kennedy's
imagination conjured up a picture of Ina sitting on a damp stone on the
Kopje while Poppy amused herself reading a book. That was quite enough
to convince her as to who was the cause of the child's illness.
Thereafter she never ceased to reproach Poppy with this new crime.

"If it hadn't been for _your_ wicked carelessness, my child wouldn't be
lying at death's door now," was her eternal cry, followed by a long list
of all the sins and offences committed by Poppy since first the
affliction of her presence had fallen upon the Kennedys' home.

"A thorn in my side, that's what you've been ever since I first set eyes
on your yellow face.... I don't know what God lets such beasts as you go
on living for ... no good to anyone ... dirty, deceitful little slut ...
nose always in a book ... muttering to yourself like an Irish Fenian ...
ill-treating my children.... Your mother ought to have been alive,
that's what ... _she_ would have learned you ... etc."

A fresh offence was that little Ina would have no one else with her but
the despised and evil one. The cry on her lips was always, "Poppy,
Poppy--come, Poppy!"

She lay in her cot, white and swollen, and marbly-looking, and at first
the doctor steamed her incessantly; a wire cage covered with blankets
over her body, a big kettle, with its long spout stuck into the cage,
boiling at the foot of the bed. She would moan and fret at the heat and
Poppy had to be singing to her always; even fairy tales she would have
sung to her. One day the doctor cut three slits in the instep of each
poor little foot while she lay in Poppy's arms, clinging and wailing,
and Poppy, quivering and sick, watched the sharp little knife and the
water spouting out almost up to the ceiling--no blood came. After that,
all Ina's marbly look was gone, and it was plain to see that she was
nothing but a little white skeleton; and so weak she could hardly
whisper to Poppy to sing to her--"There's a Friend for little children,"
and "Snow-white and Rose-red"--her favourite hymn and her favourite
fairy-tale.

It had never occurred to Poppy that the child would die; but one day the
doctor stood a long time watching her as she lay staring straight at the
ceiling with her pretty brown eyes all glazy, and her little ghost hands
clutching the bars of her cot, and presently he shrugged his shoulders
in a hopeless way and turned to Mrs. Kennedy.

"I thought we might save her as she was so young, but----"

       *       *       *       *       *

Then he went away and did not come so often after. And day by day Ina
grew thinner and whiter, and her eyes got bigger and shone more, and she
never made a sound except to whisper, "Poppy--sing, Poppy."

Poppy's voice had gone to a whisper too, then, and she could only make
strange sounds in her throat; but Ina did not notice that.

The whole family used to creep into the room and stand round the cot,
while Poppy sat there with Ina's hand in hers, whispering songs between
the bars of the cot, while her head felt as though there were long sharp
needles running through it, and her throat and body were full of
horrible pains. Sometimes the room seemed all cloudy and she only
faintly saw dead faces through the dimness; Ina and she whispering
together seemed to be the only alive people in the world.

Even Aunt Lena's tongue was still those days, and forgot to abuse, but
sometimes when Ina turned away from her, moaning for Poppy, the mother's
eyes could be seen gleaming malignantly across the cot. Poppy glared
back, for she had come to love little Ina so passionately that she could
hardly bear anyone else to come near. No one had ever wanted Poppy and
loved her before, and from her gratitude sprang a deep love for the sick
child. All through the day she sat by the cot, even taking her food
there, and at night she slept wrapt in a blanket on the floor or sitting
in a chair by the bed.

       *       *       *       *       *

One evening at nine o'clock Ina died.

Poppy had been singing a little Boer love song to her in a dreadful
rustling voice, with face pressed against the cold bars and eyes shut,
when she heard a gentle sigh that seemed to pass over her face like soft
white feathers. She left off singing and peered down into the cot. The
room was very dim, but she could see the little white face with the soft
damp rings of hair round it, lying very still and with eyes closed.

"Ina," she whispered with a dreadful fear. "Ina, speak to Poppy--open
eyes, darling."

But Ina never opened eyes or spoke again.

       *       *       *       *       *

Immediately Mrs. Kennedy filled the house with her lamentations, and
mingled with them were cursings and revilings of Poppy. She would kill
her, she shrieked, even as her child had been killed by that cursed
Irish Fenian. She was raving mad for the time, and no doubt she would
have killed Poppy, or attempted it, if her husband had not been there to
keep her by main force from violence. But that Poppy should be driven
from the house she insisted.

"She shall not sleep under my roof with that innocent little corpse,"
she screamed. "Go, go out of the house, brute and beast and devil." And
breaking loose from her husband's hands she caught hold of the
ghost-like child and flung her into the yard.

When Poppy got up from the ground it was late and the door was shut for
the night. The world was black save for a few pale stars. She wondered
heavily where she could go and lie down and sleep. She was like a man
who has walked unceasingly for hundreds of miles. She could think of
nothing but sleep. She groped for the forage-house door, thinking how
sweet it would be to rest there on the bundles of forage, with the smell
of the pumpkins coming down from the roof, where they were ripening; but
the door was locked. The fowl-hok swarmed with lice in the summer; even
in her weariness her flesh crept at the thought of spending the night
there. She remembered the Kopje and her old friend the mimosa tree, but
there was a certain gloom about the Kopje on a dark night. At last she
thought of the poplar trees by the Big Dam; they were her friends--all
trees were her friends. When her heart hurt her most and her eyes seemed
bursting from her head because she could not cry, if she could get close
to a tree and press against it, and put the leaves to her eyes, some of
her misery seemed to be taken away: thoughts and hopes would come into
her mind, she could forget what had made her unhappy and her little
songs would begin to make themselves heard.

When she broke her arm she used to cry all night for them to put green
leaves on the place to stop the aching, but they would not. Only the
doctor, when he heard about it, brought her a bunch of geranium leaves
one morning. She put them quickly under her pillow and when no one was
there laid them down by her side, because she could not get them under
the splints, and they eased the pain, until they were withered and "Aunt
Lena" found them in the bed and threw them away: then the pain was as
bad as ever.

The poplar trees grew in a long line of thirty or so by the side of the
Big Dam which lay just outside the town past the Presidency. Poppy was
sometimes allowed to take the children there, when Clara and Emily went
to help mind the children, in case they climbed up the dam wall and fell
into the water. They were tall, grand trees, that never ceased rustling
in the breeze that crept across the big expanse of water, even on the
hottest days. Poppy had climbed every one of them, and she never forgot
the moment of pure gold joy that she felt when she reached the top of
each and sat there silent and afar from the world, cloistered round by
the mysteriously whispering leaves. But the seventh tree was her
specially loved friend. It belonged to her--and she had climbed to its
very tip, higher than anyone ever had before, and cut her name in the
soft pale bark.

And this was the friend she turned to on that night of dreadful
weariness when Ina died.

She never knew how she got through the town, silent and dark, and over
the little hill thick with _bessie_ bushes and rocks that lay between
the Dames' Institute and the Presidency. She did not even remember
climbing the tree, which had a thick smooth trunk and was hard to get up
for the first six or seven feet. But at last she was in her seat at the
top between two branches, cuddling up to the mother-trunk with her arms
round it and her eyes closed.

Then, even though her heart took comfort, the darkness and strange
sounds of the night terrified her, and filled her with dread and
despair. There were wild ducks flying and circling in long black lines
against the pallid stars over the dam, wailing to each other as though
they had lost something they could never, never find again. And the wind
on the water made a dreary pattering that sounded like the bare feet of
hundreds of dead people who had come out of the graveyards close by, and
were hurrying backwards and forwards on the dam. Then there would be a
mysterious rushing through the trees and all the leaves would quiver and
quake against each other, like little ghosts that were afraid to be out
in the dark night. Poppy wondered if Ina's little ghost was with them.

In the highest windows of the Dames' Institute there were still a few
lights showing, and a dim red glow came from a window at one end of the
Presidency, and when Poppy opened her eyes these seemed like friends to
her. But they went out one by one, and with the last, light seemed to go
out of her mind too. She shut her eyes again, and pressed her heart
against the poplar tree, and called through the darkness to her mother.
She did not know whether she really called aloud, but it seemed to her
that a long thin shriek burst from her lips, as a bullet bursts from a
gun, piercing through the air for miles.

"Mother! Mother! Mother, my heart is breaking." She sobbed, and sobbed,
and sobbed, gripping the little ghostly leaves and pressing them to her
eyes. But her mother did not come, of course. No one came. Only the
little ghostly leaves shivered more than ever and the dreary dead feet
came pattering over the water. At this time a sweet, sad cadence of
words streamed into Poppy's head and began to form a little song.
Strange, that though its burden was misery and wretchedness, it
presently began to comfort her a little.

"My heart is as cold as a stone in the sea"--it ran.

Yet Poppy had never seen the sea.

Everyone in the world seemed to be sleeping except the dead people and
Poppy. Even the clock in the Government buildings struck as though
muffled up in blankets, speaking in its sleep. When it was striking she
raised her head to listen and count the strokes, and forgetting the
horror of the night opened her eyes--and beheld a terrible, shroudy
vision creeping over the world. It came very slowly and stealthily, like
a grey witch in a tale of horror, and ate up little patches of darkness
as it came, swelling larger as it ate. Oh! the dead people swaying to
and fro on the water! She prayed they might be gone back to their graves
before the grey witch reached them with her long, clutching fingers; she
prayed in a frenzy of fear for herself, calling to Christ and Mary
Mother of God, to save her from the grey witch. She rocked herself
backwards and forwards, praying and moaning, and almost falling from the
tree, and at last in reckless desperation opened her eyes, and glared
out over the dam--and saw that the dawn had come. The grey witch had
turned into a lovely lady, all decked in palest pink, with her arms
spread wide in the sky, trailing long veils of sheeny lavender cloud
behind her.

       *       *       *       *       *

A man and a boy with guns in their hands were creeping along under the
dam wall, trying to get near a covey of wild duck on the water.
Presently they stopped, and crouching, took aim and fired. The birds
rose in a swarm and flew shrieking in long black lines, leaving two poor
little black bodies on the dam--one flapping the water with a feeble
wing, trying to rise, and falling back every time. The boy threw off his
clothes and went in after them, while the man drew under the shadow of
the dam wall, and began to run, making for the far side of the water,
where the ducks seemed likely to settle again.

Presently the lady of the sky grew brighter and streaks of gold came
into her pink and lavender veils; the grass was all silvery with the
heavy dew, and the earth gave up a sweet and lovely smell. God seems to
go away from Africa at night, but He comes back most beautiful and
radiant in the morning. Birds began to chirrup and twitter in the trees
and bushes, and take little flying journeys in the air. The clock
struck five--clear and bell-like strokes now, that sang and echoed out
into the morning.

Poppy felt cold and stiff and hungry, and very tired, as though she
should fall down and die if she stayed in the tree any longer.

There was nothing to do, and nowhere to go but home. After all, Aunt
Lena could only kill her once. Then she would join Ina and see her
mother, and hear Irish melodies, and be where it was not cold or lonely
any more. She got down from the tree almost cheerfully and made her way
through the grass, plucking a few _crase bessies_ by the way and
munching them as she walked. There was hardly anyone about the town,
except a few _boys_ carrying pails of water from the fountain. When she
reached home, she found that the house was still shut and locked, with
all the blinds down. So she sat on the kitchen step and waited until old
Sara, coming out to get wood for the fire, nearly fell over her.

"Tch! Tch! Tch!" she clucked. "_Arme kentze! War vas sig gisterand?_"
(Poor child! Where were you last night?)

"_Dar bij de dam. Ge koffi O'Sara. Ik is freeslik kow._" (Up by the Big
Dam. Give me some coffee, Sara. I am very cold.)

"Jah! Jah!" said old Sara, and hurried away, clucking and muttering, to
make the fire and get the morning coffee. Poppy went in and warmed
herself, and presently got down the cups and beakers and stood them in a
row on the kitchen table. Cups and saucers for aunt and uncle and Clara
and Emily, and beakers for the children. Old Sara poured them full of
steaming black coffee, added milk and sugar and a home-made rusk in each
saucer, and carried them away to the bedrooms. Poppy sat down with a
beaker full, dipping a rusk into the coffee and eating it sopped,
because the rusks are too hard to eat any other way. Presently old Sara
came and squatted on her haunches by the fire too, drinking her coffee
from a white basin with a blue band round it (blue that it gave Poppy a
pain to look at, it was so cold and livid), and making fearful
squelching noises, she sopped and ate. Rolling her big black and white
eyes at Poppy, she whispered all that had happened after she had gone.
Aunt Lena had screamed and cried for hours, raving that she would not
have her child's murderess in the house again. She could go and live in
the fowls' _hok_, or the forage-house, until another home was found for
her, but if Poppy came into her sight again, she would tear her limb
from limb. Afterwards she had coughed and spat up blood. Old Sara wagged
her head, giving this piece of information as one who should say: "Serve
her right, too." The doctor had come and said that "something was broken
inside." Old Sara patted her wobbly stomach. "She must go to bed and not
move for a month or she would go too." Old Sara pointed sanctimoniously
upwards.

It was even so. Aunt Lena lay for weeks on her bed, but still ruling her
house from it. Poppy was not allowed to eat or sleep under the house
roof. A blanket was given to her, and she slept on the bales of chaff in
the out-house with a bundle of forage for a pillow. Old Sara brought to
her there such meals as she was allowed to receive.

The twins were not allowed to speak to her: a strange girl was hired to
take them out--Poppy did not mind that. Clara and Emily passed her in
the yard as though she was a jackal or some unclean beast--she minded
that even less. The only thing she minded at all, was not being allowed
to see Ina before she was buried.

On the day of the funeral, the little cold form in the coffin was not
more cold and numb than one lying out in the out-house between two bales
of chaff. Despair of mourning had Poppy by the throat. She could have
wailed like a banshee. Indeed, if her voice had not gone from her, it
is probable that she would have relieved the pressure on her heart and
brain in this fashion. As it was, she was the only person in the place
who gave no outward sign of mourning. Her old blue galatea overall, with
the pattern worn faint in front, and the sleeves in rags, might have
grown to her back. But old Sara was given a dark dress of Aunt Lena's,
and a new black _dook_ to wear on her head. Clara and Emily had new
black alpaca dresses, with tucks round the bottom and black ribbon
sashes. Eight little girls came dressed in white, with their hair down
and long floating white muslin veils hanging behind, and bunches of
white flowers in their hands. They were to carry the coffin in turns,
four carrying and four walking behind, because it was a very long way to
the graveyard. Mr. Kennedy and Georgie and Bobby walked behind them, and
then a great many men. But the saddest mourner of all watched from the
crack of the forage-house door, and thought how sad and beautiful it all
was, and how it would have been spoilt if she had gone out and joined it
in her blue overall; and after the procession was out of sight, lay
there on her face on the chaff, and could not cry; and seemed to have
swallowed a stone, that stuck in her throat and gave her dreadful pains
all across her chest; and whose heart kept saying: "I hate God! I hate
aunt!" And when she tried to scream it aloud, found that she had no
voice.

In the evening when the sun was set, but before it was dark, a figure
stole out of the back yard, crept through the empty _spruit_, slipped
through a private garden and came out by the cathedral steps; then up
past the big church bell that tolled for the dead, and so to the
graveyard.

All the way she gathered wild flowers and grasses--rock-maiden-hair,
_rooi gras_, moon-flowers, and most especially shivery-grass, and the
little perky rushes with a flower sprouting out of them, which the
children call _tulps_. Ina had always loved these. Some "four o'clocks"
too, stolen from a front garden as she passed, were added, and even a
_stink bloem_ graced the great bunch with which Poppy entered the
churchyard.

She found a new little heap of red earth that she knew must be Ina's
grave, for it was all covered with wreaths and the bunches of flowers
the eight girls had carried. Scraping them all to the foot of the grave,
Poppy laid hers where she thought Ina's hands would be, whispering down
through the earth:

"From Poppy, Ina--Poppy who loves you best of all."

       *       *       *       *       *

Some nights old Sara would come sneaking softly over to the
forage-house, to sit a while with Poppy; sometimes she had a rusk to
give the prisoner; most often she had nothing but an end of candle, but
that was very welcome. Lighting it, and sticking it on a side beam, she
would squat on the floor, and taking off her _dook_, proceed to comb her
wool. Poppy was glad of company, and interested in the frank way old
Sara attended to the business of catching and killing her
_chochermanners_; besides, there were a lot of interesting things in old
Sara's wool besides _chochermanners_: there was a little bone box full
of snuff, and a little bone spoon to put it in the nose with; and a
piece of paper with all old Sara's money in it; and a tooth belonging to
old Sara's mother, and several small home-made bone combs and pins and
charms.

Old Sara's Dutch was poor, and Poppy could not speak Basuto, so that
much conversation did not ensue, but black people can tell a great deal
without saying much.

Once Poppy asked her why she did not go to her _kraal_ and live with her
children instead of working for white people.

Old Sara took snuff and answered briefly:

"_Ek het ne kinders, oor Ek is ne getroud._" (I have no children,
because I am not married.)

This was good, but not infallible logic, as Poppy even in her few years
had discovered.

"Why didn't you get married when you were young, old Sara?" she queried.

Old Sara rolled her eyes mournfully at the child, and muttered some
words in her own language. Then slowly she undid the buttons of many
kinds and colours which adorned the front of her dress. From the left
bosom she took a large bundle of rags, and placed them carefully on the
floor, then opening her bodice wide, she revealed her black body bare to
the waist. Poppy's astonished gaze fell upon a right breast--no object
of beauty, but large and heavy; but where the left breast should be was
only a little shrivel of brown skin high up out of line with the other.

That was old Sara's only answer to Poppy's question. Afterwards she
quietly replaced her bundle of rags, and rebuttoned her dress.

As for Poppy, she pondered the problem long. At last she made a little
song, which she called:

"The woman with the crooked breast."

       *       *       *       *       *

One night old Sara brought news.

Poppy's box was being packed. In two days she was going to be sent away
in the post-cart. Poppy thrilled with joy, and had no foreboding until
next day when she overheard Clara and Emily whispering together in the
yard. It transpired that though they envied Poppy the journey to Boshof
in the post-cart, they did not envy her subsequent career under the
protection of their mother's sister, Aunt Clara Smit.

"Do you remember that time ma sent us there when Ina had the diphtheria?
We never got anything but bread and dripping, and she was eating chops
and steaks all the time."

"Yes," said Clara, "and remember how she used to beat _Katzi_, the
little Hottentot girl, in bed every night for a week until the blood
came, just because she broke a cup."

"Ha! ha!" they chirruped, "won't Miss Poppy get it _just_!"

"Yes, and mammer's going to give her something before she goes, too. She
sent me to buy a _sjambok_ this morning, because pa's hidden his away,
and when he's gone out to the 'Phoenix' to-night, she's going to have
Poppy across the bed in front of her. You're to hold her head and me her
feet."

"Tlk! Won't she get it!"

This interesting piece of news determined Poppy on a matter which had
long been simmering in her mind. She decided at last that she would take
no more beatings from Aunt Lena, and neither would she sample the
quality of Aunt Clara Smit's charity. She would run away.

All that afternoon she lay turning the matter over, and later she took
old Sara into her confidence for two reasons: old Sara must commandeer
some food for her, and must also get for her the only thing she wanted
to take away with her--a round green stone brooch which had belonged to
her mother, and which Aunt Lena kept in her top drawer.

Poppy felt sure that with her mother's brooch on her she need fear
nothing in the world; it was green, and therefore kindly disposed, as
all green things were, being akin to trees.

It took a long while to beguile old Sara to obtain the brooch, for the
old woman was very honest and she thought this looked too much like a
stealing matter. Eventually she was persuaded, and a little after seven
o'clock she brought it stealthily to the forage-house, together with a
pocketful of food-scraps saved from her own portion of the evening meal.

After this, Poppy did not dare wait another instant. She knew that as
soon as he had finished his supper, her uncle would light his pipe and
stroll off to spend a cheerful evening in the billiard-room of the
"Phoenix Hotel"; then they would come to fetch her indoors!

With a hasty farewell to old Sara, her only friend, she slipped out
through the dark yard and ran swiftly up the street. Her direction was
towards the _Uitspan_, a big bare place about half a mile from the town
where wagons halted for a night before starting on a journey, or before
bringing their loads into town in the morning. There was a big _Uitspan_
out beyond St. Michael's, and she made for that one, remembering there
were always plenty of wagons there.

When she stole near it in the darkness, she counted eight wagons, four
of which were loaded to depart, since their dissel-booms were turned
away from the town.

There were several fires burning, and the fume of coffee was on the
night air. Someone was making _as-kookies_ (ash-cakes) too, for a
pleasant smell of burnt dough assailed Poppy's nose. Four Kaffir _boys_
were sitting round a three-legged pot, dipping into it and jabbering
together, and by the light of another fire a white woman and three
children were taking their evening meal. The wagon behind them was
loaded with furniture and boxes, and by this Poppy was sure that they
were a family on the move. She crept nearer to them, keeping in the
shadow of the close-growing bushes. The dull red fires and the stars
gave the only light there was.

"Ma," said one of the children at the fire, "I see a spook over there by
the bushes." The mother's response was: "Here, you make haste and finish
your coffee and get into the wagon. It's time you children were asleep.
They're going to inspan at eleven and you'd better get a good sleep
before the wagon starts creaking and jolting."

This was useful information to Poppy. Her plan was to follow the wagon
when it started and keep near it until late the next day, when too far
from Bloemfontein to be sent back.

She crouched lower among the bushes, and presently began to munch some
of her oddments of food, while still she watched the family she meant to
adopt. When they had finished their meal they first washed up their tin
beakers and plates with water from a small _fykie_ which hung under the
wagon; then everything was carefully put away into a wooden locker, and
they prepared to retire for the night. The mother was a round-faced,
good-natured-looking, half-Dutch colonial, evidently. She climbed
sturdily into the tented wagon by the help of the brake and a little
_reimpe_ ladder. Across the tent was swung a _cartel_ (thong mattress)
and atop of this was a big comfortable mattress with pillows and
blankets arranged ready for use. By the light of the lantern which the
woman fixed to the roof of the tent, Poppy could see that the sides of
the tent were lined with calico bags with buttoned-over flaps, all
bulging with the things that would be needed on the journey. The woman
proceeded to store away more things from a heap in the middle of the
bed, some she put under the pillows, some under the mattress, and many
were tied to the wooden ribs of the tent so that it presently resembled
a Christmas-tree. Meantime the children clustered on the brake and the
_reimpe_ ladder, fidgeting to climb into the snug-looking nest. The
mother talked while she worked:

"Here, Alice! I'll put this pair of old boots into the end bag, they'll
do for wearing in the veldt----"

"Oh, sis, ma! I hate those old boots, they hurt me--" expostulated
Alice.

"Nonsense, how can they hurt you? You keep your new ones for Pretoria,
anything'll do on the veldt. Now you all see where I'm putting the
comb--and this beaker we'll keep up in your corner, Minnie, so we don't
have to go to the locker every time we're thirsty. I hope that boy will
hang the _fykie_ where we can reach it. Begin to take your boots off,
Johnny. I'm not going to have you in here treading on my quilt with
those boots; no one is to get in until they're _carl-foot_."

"I'll get _deviljies_ (thorns) in my feet if I take them off out here,"
says Johnny. "Can't I sit on the edge of the bed?"

"All right then, but keep your feet out. Minnie, take off that good
ribbon and tie your hair with this piece of tape," etc.

Eventually they were all in the tent, lying in a row crossways, the
mother by the opening as a sort of barricade. They did not undress--only
loosened their clothes.

Everyone wanted to lie across the opening. They couldn't see anything at
the back of the tent, they complained; only had to lie and stare at the
things bobbing overhead.

"You never mind that," said the mother, arguing. "You've got three or
four weeks to see the veldt and the oxen in. I'm going to lie here so
that I can keep you children from falling out while we're trekking. Why
I knew a woman once who let her baby lie on the outside, and in the
middle of the night she woke up and heard an awful crunching under the
wheels, and when she felt for the baby it wasn't there!" This story
caused a great sensation, but presently Johnny asked how the baby's
bones could crunch under the wheels "if it fell out behind the wagon!"

The mother considered for a moment, then said:

"It was the wheels of the wagon behind, of course, _dom-kop_."

But Johnny pointed out that a whole span of oxen would come before the
wheels of the next wagon, and that the baby would be all trodden to bits
before the wheels reached it.

"Oh, _Kgar! Sis!_" cried the sisters; and at this his mother told him
amiably to shut his mouth and go to sleep.

But though she put out the lantern the talk still went on intermittently
until replaced by snores.

The _boys_ and the transport-drivers all lay wrapped in their blankets,
snoring too. Only afar the oxen could be heard moving as they grazed,
and the bell on the neck of one of them clanked restlessly. The fires
had died down to dim red spots. The watcher in the bushes was the only
one awake in the camp. She feared that if she slept the family in the
wagon might be up and away. Her mind was made up to accompany that
good-natured-looking woman and her family to Pretoria, since that was
where they were bound for. She would follow the wagons and join them
when a long way from Bloemfontein, and her tale would be that she
belonged to a wagon which had gone on in front. She would pretend that
she had got lost, and ask to be taken on to rejoin her relations in
Pretoria.

At about eleven o'clock the moon rose, but no one stirred in the camp.
Suddenly the figure of a man arose, took a long whip from the side of a
wagon, unwound it, walked a little way from the camp, swung it whistling
softly round his head for a moment, then sent a frightful report ringing
across the veldt. Afterwards he lay down again until a great crackling
and trampling and shouting told that the oxen were in the camp with
their herders hooting and yelling round them. In a moment other still
figures were on their feet; a clamour arose of voices shouting, wooden
yokes clattering, dissel-booms creaking; bullocks were called at by
their names and sworn at individually:

"_Rooi-nek! Yoh Skelpot! com an da!_" (Redneck! You tortoise! come on
there!)

"_Viljoen! Wat makeer jij?_" (Viljoen! What's wrong with _you_?)

Loud blows and kicks were heard and demands for missing oxen.

"_Jan, war is de Vaal-pans?_" (John, where is the yellow-belly?)

"_Ek saal yoh net now slaan, jou faarbont._" (I'll strike you in a
minute, you baseborn.)

"_De verdomder Swart-kop!_"

Each wagon had a span of eighteen or twenty oxen, and as soon as the
last pair was yoked, a small black boy, the _voerlooper_, would run to
their heads, seize the leading _rein_ and turn them towards the road.
Then came a tremendous crack of the driver's whip, a stream of oaths and
oxen's names, intermingled and ending in:

"_Yak!_"

One by one the four wagons took the road, raising clouds of red dust,
the drivers and boys running alongside.

Usually passenger-wagons go first in the line, but the wagon with
Poppy's adopted family in it, started last, because _Swart-kop_, a big
black-and-white ox, had been particularly fractious, and had delayed the
operation of inspanning, putting the driver into a terrible passion.
Poppy waited until his cursings and revilings were only faintly heard on
the air, then slipping quietly through the camp which had returned to
peaceful sleeping, she plunged into the clouds of dust.

Throughout the night hours she padded along, her throat and ears and
mouth filled with the fine dirt, her eyes running and sore; afraid to
get too near the wagons for fear of being seen; afraid to be too far
behind for fear of she knew not what.

Towards dawn they passed through a narrow _sluit_. The water was filthy
at the _drift_ when all the wagons had gone through it, but she left the
road and found a clean place higher up where she thankfully drank and
laved her begrimed face. As the dawn broke she could see that the veldt
was well-bushed with clumps of rocks, and big ant-heaps here and there;
there would be plenty of hiding-places when the wagons stopped.

Presently there were signs of a coming halt. The oxen slackened pace,
the drivers began to call to each other, and the man who was evidently
the _Baas_ of the convoy went off the road and inspected the ground.

Then a long loud:

"_Woa! An--nauw!_" passed along the line, each wagon took to the veldt,
drawing up at about fifty yards from the road.

Thereafter came the outspanning, with the identical accompaniments of
the inspanning. When the oxen had gone to seek water and food in charge
of their herders, the _voerloopers_ departed to gather wood and _mis_
(dry cow-dung) for the fires, and the drivers unrolled their blankets
and lay upon them resting, but not sleeping, until a meal had been
prepared; someone began to play a concertina at this time. Afar from the
encampment Poppy had found a big dry hole in the heart of a clump of
bushes. The thorns tore her face and her clothes as she struggled
through them, but in the hole at last she fell down and succumbed to the
passion for sleep which overwhelmed her. She lay like a stone all
through the day, hearing nothing until the loud clap of a whip pulled
her out of her dreams.

"_Yak--Varns!_"

Half dead with weariness--stiff, wretched, hungry--she crept from her
hiding-place and stumbled on her way, wrapped once more in the
impenetrable dust.

On the night of the second day she discovered herself to the family in
the tented wagon. Staggering from the bush at the side of the road she
climbed on to the brake of the slowly moving wagon and appeared before
the comfortable contented occupants--a filthy, tattered, unkempt vision;
her face peaked and wan under the dirt, her eyes glazy. "Give me food
and water," she whispered--her voice had never returned since Ina's
death.

After one long stare, and amidst screams from the children, the woman
pulled her up into the tent, bade the children make room, and quickly
found water and biscuits.

Poppy ate and drank ravening, then lay back and cried weakly, the big
hot tears washing white streaks down her cheeks. The woman with an eye
to her clean bedclothes, proceeded to sponge her face with water in a
tin beaker, and told Alice to take off the tattered boots and stockings.
She questioned Poppy the while, but Poppy cared for nothing but sleep.
She lay back and slept even as they washed her. About noon she awoke and
found herself still lying on the big bed, and the woman was standing on
the brake with coffee and a plate of stew.

"Wake up and eat this, girl; and now you are better tell me where you
come from and where you're going, hey?"

Poppy, between eating and drinking, recited her tale: she was travelling
with her father and brothers and sisters to the Transvaal; had wandered
away from the wagons and got lost on the veldt--believed she had been
wandering for a week; her name she fancifully gave as Lucy Gray (it
seemed to wake no echoes in the minds or memories of her listeners); no
doubt, she said, these wagons would catch the others up in a few days.
She begged the woman to take care of her in the meantime. She would
help with the cooking and the children--she wouldn't eat much.

The woman regarded her suspiciously once or twice, but she was stupid as
well as good-natured and had not the wit to find flaws in the
well-thought-out tale. She consented to fall in with Poppy's request--in
common humanity she could do little else--found some clean clothes for
her and a pair of old boots, and gave her _fat_ to smear on her wounds
and sore feet.

But first Poppy had to be passed before the _Baas_ of the wagons--the
big fierce-looking Boer who fortunately was not at all fierce, only very
stupid, and although he refused to believe her tale, turning to Mrs.
Brant and remarking briefly: "_Sij le!_" (she lies!) he could not offer
any suggestion as to what the truth might be; nor did he make any
objection to Mrs. Brant's plans; so Poppy was outcast no more. She
became one of a family, and speedily made herself so useful to Mrs.
Brant that the good woman was glad to have her.

Followed many long happy weeks. Happy even when the wet-season swooped
down on them and they had to wait on the banks of swollen rivers
fireless for days; or remain stuck in a mudhole for hours, until their
wheels could be dug out or pulled out by three spans of oxen combined,
while mosquitoes bit and swarmed over them, leaving a festering sore for
every bite they gave; even under the heavy sweltering _sail_ that was
flung over them at nights to keep rain out, and which also kept the air
out and made the small tent like a pest-house; even when the food gave
out and they had to rely on what they could get at the scattered farms.

In spite of all the mishaps, everyone was kind and good-natured. No one
offered blows or taunts to Poppy, and her starved heart revived a little
and began to hold up its head under the gentle rain of kindliness and
friendliness. Then, the glamour of travel was upon her for the first
time. Never before had she seen the hills, the mountains, the great
rolling spaces of veldt, the rivers sweeping and boiling down their wide
ravines. It was most wonderful and beautiful, too, to wake every dawn
and step out of the wagon to a fresh world. Where last night had been a
hill, to-morrow would be a rushing river, befringed with mimosa, whose
odour had been sweet on the breeze all the day before. The next day
would find them on a bare plain, with no stick or stone to give shelter
from the burden of the sun or the rain, and the next they would lie in
the purple shadow of a mountain, on which were scarlet geraniums as tall
as trees, and strange flowers shaped like birds and insects grew
everywhere.

And oh! the fresh glory of the morning dews! The smell of the wood smoke
on the air! The wide open empty world around them and the great silence
into which the small human sounds of the camp fell and were lost like
pebbles thrown into the sea! Happy, rain-soaked, sun-bitten days!
Bloemfontein and misery were a long way behind. Poppy's sad songs were
all forgotten; new ones sprang up in her heart, songs flecked with
sunlight and bewreathed with wild flowers.

       *       *       *       *       *

But a cloud was on the horizon. The convoy of wagons drew at last near
its destination. Poppy began to be haunted at nights with the fear of
what new trouble must await her there. Where would she go? What would
she do? How could she face kind Mrs. Brant with her tale of parents and
friends proved false? These frightful problems filled the nights in the
creaking wagon with terror. The misty bloom that had fallen upon her
face during the weeks of peace and content, vanished, and haggard lines
of anxiety and strain began to show.

"Child, you look peaky," said good Mrs. Brant. "What'll your ma say? I
must give you a Cockle's pill."

But Poppy grew paler and more peaky.

Two days' _trek_ from Pretoria she was missed at inspan time. Long
search was made. The wagons even waited a whole day and night for her;
the _boys_ called and the drivers sent cracks of their great whips
volleying and echoing for miles, as a signal of their whereabouts in
case she had wandered far and lost her bearings. At night they made
enormous fires to guide her to their camping-places. But she never
returned. It was then and for the first time that two little lines of
verse came into the memory of Alice, the eldest girl, who had been at a
good school. She recited them to the family, who thought them passing
strange and prophetic:

               "But the sweet face of Lucy Gray
               Will never more be seen."

       *       *       *       *       *

Unfortunately, after leaving the wagons and hiding herself in a deep
gulch, Poppy had fallen asleep, and that so heavily after her many
nights of sleepless worry, that she did not awake for more than fourteen
hours. When she did wake she found that some poisonous insect or reptile
had stung one of her feet terribly: it was not painful, but enormously
swollen and discoloured, and she found it difficult to get along. The
wagons had gone and she could never catch up with them again, even if
she wished. On the second night she heard, many miles away, the cracking
of the whips and saw little glow-worms of light that might have been the
flare of fires lighted to show her the way back to the wagons; and her
spirit yearned to be with those friendly faces and kindly fires. She
wept and shivered and crouched fearsomely in the darkness.

The next day it rained: merciless, savage, hammering rain. Sometimes she
wandered in it, fancying herself wandering in a forest of trees, all
with stems as thick as a rain-drop; sometimes it was so strong she could
lean against it; sometimes she thought she was a moth beating against
glass, trying, trying to get out.

Another night came.

Through most of that she lay prone on her face,
thinking--believing--hoping that she was dead and part of the earth she
lay on.

And, indeed, the greater part of her was mud.

She had long ago lost the road. She supposed she must be in the
Transvaal somewhere; but at this time, half-delirious from pain, hunger,
and terror, she believed herself back near Bloemfontein--seemed to
recognise the hills outside the town. Terrified, she took another
direction, falling sometimes and unable to rise again until she had
slept where she lay. Whenever she saw bushes with berries or fruits on
them she gathered and ate.

Sometimes from her hiding-places she could see Kaffirs pass singly, or
in small parties; but after searching their faces, she let them pass.
Even in her delirium something warned her not to make herself known.

One night, it seemed to her weeks after she had left the wagons, she was
suddenly dazzled by the sight of a red light shining quite near her. She
gathered up her last remnants of strength and walked towards it; she
believed she urged and ran--in reality she merely drifted by the help of
a friendly wind that happened to be blowing that way. At last she saw
that it was not one--but many lamps and candles shining through the
windows of a house. But the windows themselves could be only dimly seen
through the leaves of a tree, which overhung the house and threw long
claw-like shadows everywhere. Next, her broken feet knew gravel under
them: white walls were before her, too--and green doors and green
window-shutters, all laced and latticed with the shadows of one great
tree that stood like a monster in the path by the big door. The lights
that shone out and dazzled showed her that the tree was very, very
green, with a myriad strange scarlet eyes glowing in it; eyes that
glowed with an alert brightness that was not friendly. Poppy had always
loved trees and believed them to be her friends, but this tree
frightened her. Nevertheless she crept closer to the biggest, brightest
window of the house, and peered in through the glass panes, a little
dulled and dimmed by the ever-beating, everlasting rain. She saw a man
sitting at a table spread with beautiful shining vases of flowers,
dishes of food, plates and glasses that glittered, fruit--two black
_boys_ waited on him, dressed in white uniforms, and through an open
doorway a tan-skinned old woman with a white _dook_ could be seen
speaking to one of the _boys_--handing him a dish that flamed with
little blue flames. The man at the table leaned back in his chair and
faced the window. If it had not been that she believed herself dying, or
perhaps already dead, Poppy would rather have gone back to the veldt
than into the house where that face was master, for it terrified her
even as the faces of the Kaffirs on the veldt had done. The man was not
ugly; but his mouth was cruel and bitter, and his eyes were of the same
hard, cold blue as the stripe on old Sara's coffee-basin. And across his
face, from the left eye to the corner of his mouth, was a long, raw,
newly-healed scar.

It seemed to Poppy that while she stood watching this man, something
inside her shrivelled up and blew away from her like a leaf in the wind.
It came into her head then that, after all, she would not stay here at
this house; it would be better to go back to the veldt. Wearifully she
stepped down from the high steps she had climbed, reached the green
door, and then her hobbling feet would go no further.

She sank on the steps and her head knocked against the door. At once
dogs barked inside, voices came near, the door opened, letting strong
light fall across the face of Poppy, now lying on the floor. She saw
black faces around her and heard native voices crying, "Wha!" in
astonishment. Then someone lifted her up very strongly and held her
under a hanging lamp and looked at her. She saw through failing eyes
that it was the man with the scar.

"Who are you, child?" he asked, and his voice was quite kind and
friendly.

Again the feeling of terror and panic swept over the child's heart; but
she was very tired. She believed she was already dead. Her head fell
back.

"My soul is like a shrivelled leaf," is what she answered.




PART II


  "I never saw anything like the way a poppy lives with its heart and
  soul every second of the day.

  "It is the most joyful flower in the world. Not a joy of strength, for
  it is fragile, but just sheer delight in existence and devil-may-care.
  I would much rather have poppies on my coffin than stupid affected
  lilies and white roses.

  "Then the sheer cheek of a poppy, and the way it dies quickly,
  without any bother, when picked! It is such a definite vivid thing,
  whether it is braving the sun, or sleeping folded under the stars. A
  wild, fresh individuality; not a banal neutral-tinted affair out of
  the garden, or something with a smile on its face and a claw
  underneath, like a rose."

                                          (_Extract from a letter._)




CHAPTER I


The girl, with a little curling motion, leaned back in the rickshaw and
gazed with fascinated eyes at the moving picture before her, seen
through the hazy heat of a summer day.

Above the wide main street of Durban the sun blazed and glared like a
brazen image of itself in the high ardent blue. Men in loose white ducks
and flannels sauntered along, or stood smoking and talking under the
shop awnings.

Carriages and rickshaws flew past, containing women in light gowns and
big veils, with white and sometimes scarlet sunshades. Black boys at the
street corners held out long-stalked roses and sprays of fragrant mimosa
to the passers-by, beguiling them to buy. Coolies with baskets of fish
on their heads and bunches of bananas across their shoulders, shambled
along, white-clad and thin-legged. One, with a basket of freshly-caught
fish on his arm, cried in a nasal sing-song voice:

"Nice lovely shad! Nice lovely shad!"

Two water-carts, clanking along in opposite directions, left a dark
track behind them on the dusty road, sending up a heavy odour of wet
earth which the girl snuffed up as though she had some transportingly
sweet perfume at her delicate nostrils.

"I'm sure there is no smell in the world like the smell of wet Africa,"
she cried softly to herself, laughing a little. Her eyes took on a misty
look that made them like lilac with the dew on it.

Her black hair, which branched out on either side of her forehead, had a
trick of spraying little veils of itself over her eyes and almost
touching her cheek-bones, which were pitched high in her face, giving it
an extraordinarily subtle look.

She was amazingly attractive in a glowing ardent fashion that paled the
other women in the street and made men step to the edge of the pavement
to stare at her.

She looked at them, too, through the spraying veils of her hair, but her
face remained perfectly composed under the swathes of white chiffon
which she wore flung back over her wide hat, brought down at the sides
and twisted round her throat, with two long flying ends.

The big Zulu boy between the shafts, running noiselessly except for the
pat of his bare feet and the "Tch-k, tch-k, tch-k" of the seed bangles
round his ankles, became conscious that his fare was creating interest.
He began to put on airs, giving little shouts of glorification, taking
leaps in the air and tilting the shafts of the rickshaw backwards to the
discomfort of its occupant.

She leaned forward, and in a low voice spoke a few edged words in Zulu
that made him change his manners and give a glance of astonishment
behind him, crying:

"_Aa-h! Yeh--boo Inkosizaan!_" behaving himself thereafter with decorum,
for it was a disconcerting thing that an _Inkosizaan_ who had come
straight off the mail-steamer at the Point should speak words of reproof
to him in his own language.

Presently he came to the foot of the Berea Hill, which is long and
sloping, causing him to slacken pace and draw deep breaths.

A tram-car dashed past them going down-hill, while another climbed
laboriously up, both open to the breeze and full of people. The road
began to be edged with fenced and hedged-in gardens, the houses
standing afar and almost hidden by shrubs and greenery.

The girl spoke to the rickshaw-puller once more.

"The _Inkos_ at the Point told you where to go. Do you know the house?"

He answered yes, but that it was still afar off--right at the top of the
Berea.

She leaned back again content. It delighted her to be alone like this.
It was quite an adventure, and an unexpected one. A malicious,
mischievous smile flashed across her face as she sat thinking of the
annoyance of the _Inkos_ left behind at the docks. He had been furious
when he found no closed carriage waiting for them.

There was one on the quay, but it was not theirs, and on approaching it
and finding out his mistake, he stood stammering with anger. But she had
flashed into a waiting rickshaw, knowing very well that he could not
force her to get out and go back to the ship without making a scene.

Nothing would induce him to make a scene and attract the attention of
people to himself. He had indeed told her in a low voice to get out and
come back with him to wait for a carriage, but she merely made a mouth
and looked appealingly at him, saying:

"Oh Luce! It will be so lovely in a rickshaw. I have never ridden in one
like this yet."

"Well, ride to the devil," he had amiably responded, and turned his back
on her. She had called out after him, in an entrancingly sweet voice:

"Yes, I know, Luce; but what is the address?"

"It was a shame," she said to herself now, still smiling; "but really I
don't often vex him!"

A man and a woman passed, as she sat smiling her subtle smile through
her spraying hair, and looked at her with great curiosity.

Afterwards the man said excitedly:

"That girl takes the shine out of Mary----"

The woman, who looked well-bred with a casual distinguished manner,
agreed with him, but did not tell him so. She said:

"Her eyes look as though they were painted in by Burne-Jones, and she is
dressed like a Beardsley poster; but I think she is only a girl who is
glad to be alive. Mary, however, is the most beautiful woman in Africa."

The girl heard the words "Burne-Jones eyes," and knew they were speaking
of her.

At last she arrived at the gates of her destination. Big, green iron
gates, that clanged behind her as she walked quickly forward down a
winding path into a deep dim garden. There was no more to be seen but
trees and tangles of flowering shrubs and bushes and stretches of green
grass, and trees and trees and trees. Some of the trees were so tall and
old that they must have been growing there when Vasco da Gama first
found Natal; but there were mangoes and sweetly-smelling orange arbours,
that could only have been planted a mere twenty or thirty years. The
magnolia bushes were in bud, and clots of red and golden flowers were
all aflare. Cacti, spreading wide prickly arms, and tall furzy grasses.
Cool wet corners had grottos frondy with ferns; other corners were like
small tropical jungles with enormous palms trailed and tangled over with
heavy waxen-leaved creepers and strangely shaped flowers.

At last, deep in the heart of this wild, still garden, she found the
house. A tall rose-walled house, its balconies and verandahs, too, all
draped and veiled with clinging green. One lovely creeper that clothed
the hall-porch was alive with flowers that were like scarlet stars.

She broke one of them off and stuck it in the bosom of her gown, where
it glowed and burned all day.

Then she rang the bell.

After a minute, someone came bustling down the hall and the door opened,
discovering a stout and elderly coloured woman in a tight dress of
navy-blue sateen with large white spots. Upon her head she wore a snowy
_dook_. At the sight of the girl she shrieked, and fell back into a
carved oak chair that stood conveniently at hand.

"Poppy!" she cried; "and no carriage sent for Luce! What time did the
steamer come, in the name of goodness me?"

"It's no use asking that question now, Kykie," said the girl grimly.
"The only thing to do is to send a carriage down at once."

Kykie departed with amazing alacrity, while the girl examined the hall,
and opening the doors that gave off it, peeped into several rooms.

"Most of the old furniture from the farm!" she commented with a look of
pleasure. Presently she came to a flight of three stairs, and directed
by the sound of Kykie's voice, she stepped down them and found herself
in a large white-washed kitchen lined with spotless deal tables and
broad shelves. An enormous kitchen range, shining and gleaming with
steel and brass, took up the whole of one side of the kitchen. Wide
windows let in a flood of cheerful sunshine.

Kykie, having loaded three Zulu boys with imprecations and instructions
and driven them forth, had sunk into a chair again, panting, with her
hand pressed to her heart, and an expression of utter misery on her
face.

"Don't be so excited, Kykie," said the girl. "You can't escape the wrath
to come; what is the use of making yourself miserable about it
beforehand?"

Kykie rolled her big eyes heavenwards; the whites of them were a golden
yellow.

"His first day home!" she wailed. "They told me at the shipping office
the steamer wouldn't be in before three. May their mothers----"

Poppy walked round the kitchen, looking at everything.

"You've got all the same nice old copper things you had at the farm,
haven't you, Kykie? But it is a much bigger kitchen. Which table will
you let me have to mix the salads on?"

Kykie's face became ornamented with scowls.

"My salads are as good as anyone's," she asserted.

"Nonsense! you know Luce always likes mine best. Come upstairs now and
show me my room."

"Me? With the lunch to get ready!" screamed Kykie, and jumping up she
ran to the stove and began to rattle the pots.

"Well, I will find it myself," said Poppy, going towards the door, "and
I think you're very unkind on my first day home."

But Kykie gave no heed. As a rule she was of a sociable turn of mind and
under other circumstances would have hung about Poppy, showing her
everything and bombarding her with questions; but now she was in the
clutches of despair and dismay at the thought of her neglect of her
adored master, Luce Abinger, and her very real fear of the storm that
would surely break over her head when he arrived.

Kykie called herself a "coloured St. Helena lady," but by the fat
gnarled shape of her, it is likely that she was more than half a
Hottentot. Also the evidence of her hair was against her: it was crisp
and woolly, instead of being lank and oily as a proper "St. Helena
lady's" should be. However, she always kept it concealed beneath a
spotless _dook_. Her real name, as she often informed Poppy in aggrieved
accents, was Celia Frances Elizabeth of Teck Fortune; but Luce Abinger
had brutally named her Kykie, and that was all she was ever called in
his house. By way of retaliation it was her agreeable custom to address
her master and Poppy Destin by their Christian names; but Luce Abinger
only laughed, and Poppy didn't mind in the least. The old woman was
quite ignorant and uneducated, but she had lived all her life as a
servant amongst civilised people, and she spoke correct and fluent
English, tacking many curious expressions of her own to the tails of her
remarks with an air of intense refinement.

She was often crabbed of temper and cantankerous of tongue, but the
heart within her wide and voluptuous bosom was big for Luce Abinger and
all that pertained to him. She had served him during the whole of his
twenty-five years of life in South Africa; and she was a very pearl of a
cook.

Poppy found her room without any difficulty. On opening the first door
on the first landing and looking in, she recognised her books, and the
faded yellow silk counterpane with the border of red poppies worked by
Kykie in past days. She took off her hat and surveyed the room with
contentment. Her cushions were in her chairs; her books in their
accustomed book-shelves; her long mirror with the slim gilt frame hung
between two windows that gave upon the balcony; her writing-table stood
opposite the mirror where she could look up and see herself as she
wrote. Her brown print of _Monna Lisa_ was above her dressing-table, and
her silver cross with the ivory Christ nailed to it hung over her head--

                       "To keep a maid from harm!"

There were no pictures on the pale gold walls: only three wonderful
drawings of herself, done in grey and blue and scarlet chalk on sheets
of rough-edged common brown paper and fastened up by drawing-pins. These
were the work of Luce Abinger.

She observed that all the bowls and vases were filled with green
leaves--no flowers. Kykie and the _boys_ knew that green leaves were
dearer to her than flowers.

Presently she rose and went to the mirror on the wall. Her hair did not
quite please her, so she took out two little gold side-combs and ran
them through it, until it branched out characteristically once more. She
performed this ceremony on an average of twenty times a day, and always
with a look of the frankest pleasure at the sight of herself.

"How nice my hair is!" she thought, "and how glad I am that it branches
out in that fascinating way that just suits my face! If it were any
other kind of hair, sleek, or smooth, or curly, I should not look nearly
so charming."

Later she stepped into the balcony. The sun still glared, but the place
was full of dim coolness, for its roof was massed with clematis and
Virginia creeper, and heavy curtains of creeper hung from roof to rail;
but long openings had been cut in the greenery to afford a view of the
town and sea. Over the tops of the trees, far away below, beyond many
white houses and gardens and a shining beach, was the Indian Ocean. It
lay very still and splendid: a vast sheet of Sevres enamel with a
trivial frill of white at its edges, like the lace froth at the bottom
of a woman's ball-gown. When storms sweep the Natal coast, that still
shining sea can boom and roar and flash like a thousand cannons
bombarding the town; but on the day that Poppy Destin first looked at it
from her balcony, it was as still and flat as a sea on a map.

Long, long thoughts were hers as she stood gazing there; and the best of
them all was that she was back once more in the land where the roots of
her heart were planted deep.

While she stood lost in her reveries, Luce Abinger passed through the
garden below, walking noiselessly across the green lawns. He saw her
dreaming there, in her white gown with the scarlet flower flaming at
her breast, and his tormented face became even less lovely. At that time
his mood resembled the mood of Job when he desired to curse God and die.

Poppy, becoming hungry, went down to look for lunch. She found the
master of the house already seated, beating and jangling his forks
together, a habit of his when he was impatient. He never touched his
knives. Poppy had come to the conclusion that, like James I, he had some
reason to hate and fear naked blades.

"The g-gong has been sounded twice for you," he began agreeably. "Were
you afraid the view wouldn't be there after lunch?"

"I beg your pardon, Luce. I didn't know you were in, and I never heard a
sound of the gong. Kykie, you should beat it louder."

Kykie was at the sideboard decanting whiskey. She resembled a person who
had recently taken part in a dynamitic explosion. Her _dook_ was pushed
to the back of her head, her eyes stuck out, and perspiration beaded her
nose and cheek-bones. Several of the buttons of her tight dress had come
undone.

"Heavenly me!" she retorted in shrill staccato, "you never hear anything
you don't want to, Poppy." With that she banged the decanter down and
floundered from the room.

"What can be the matter with Kykie!" said Poppy in a wondering voice.
What she was really wondering was, whether the fireworks had all been
exhausted on Kykie's devoted head or whether there would be a detonation
in her own direction shortly.

Babiyaan, a _boy_ who had been in Luce Abinger's service for ten years,
waited upon them with deft, swift hands. Poppy gave an inquiring glance
at him; but though he had also received a generous share of obloquy and
vilification, his face was as serene and impassive as an Egyptian's.

Some delicious fish was served, grilled as only Kykie could grill,
followed by cutlets and green peas, and a salad of sliced Avocado pears,
delicately peppered, and with a ravishing dressing.

Luce Abinger always preferred Poppy to mix the salads. He said that she
combined all the qualifications demanded by the old Spanish receipt for
the maker of a good salad--a spendthrift for the oil, a miser for the
vinegar, a counsellor for the salt, and a lunatic to stir all up. It
appeared that she sometimes fell short in the matter of salt, but she
assured him that he had a fine stock of that within himself to fall back
on, and acids too, in case of a lack of vinegar.

Kykie's salad was very good, and Poppy told Babiyaan to tell her so.
Later, she also sent a message of praise concerning the _omelette au
Kirsch_. Except for these remarks the meal was partaken of in silence.
Poppy, while she ate, observed and approved the old-rose walls, the few
beautiful mellowy pictures upon them, the dark polished floor and the
Persian praying-rugs spread sleekly down the room. She looked everywhere
but at the face of Luce Abinger, for she knew that his devils were at
him; and as the possessor of devils of her own, she both felt compassion
and exhibited courtesy in the presence of other people's. She never
looked at Luce Abinger's face at any time if she could help it, for the
sight of unbeautiful things always gave her intense pain; and his face
had the added terror and sadness of a thing that has once been
beautiful. Its right side was still strong and fine in line; and it was
easy to see that the mouth, before it was dragged out of drawing by the
scar and embittered and distorted by its frightful sneer, must have been
wonderfully alluring. The scar had left his eyes untouched, except for a
slight pulling-down of the outer corner of the left one where the
disfigurement began. They must have been strikingly beautiful blue eyes
once, but now a sort of perpetual cold fury at the back of them gave
them an odd and startling light. Apart from that, they were eyes which
it was not good for women to search in. Poppy sometimes thought of them
as dark and sinister pools from which it was best to retreat, for fear
of drowning and strangling in strange waters.

Presently Babiyaan brought in the little silver urn and placed it before
Poppy, and she lighted the spirit-lamp under it and made the coffee as
she was always used to do in the old white farm. Cigars and cigarettes
were put before Abinger.

Abinger drank his coffee as he had eaten, in absolute silence. Then,
getting up suddenly, he bit off a word of apology with the end of his
cigar, and left the room, Babiyaan following him.

Poppy immediately helped herself to a cigarette, put her elbows on the
table and began to smoke. Later, she took her coffee and sat in the
verandah. It was shady and full of deep comfortable chairs. From thence
she presently saw Abinger emerge from the front door and depart into the
garden; the closing clang of the gate told her that he had gone out. The
heat of the day was oppressive. She lay back, staring at the lacy green
of the trees against the blue, and considering the horrible affair of
Luce Abinger's devils.

"It is bad enough for me to have to live with them--what must it be for
him!" was her thought. She had seen his torment coming upon him as they
neared Africa. Day by day he had grown more saturnine and unsociable. At
last he spoke to no one; only Poppy, as a privileged person had an
occasional snarl thrown in her direction. It was plain to her that
returning to Africa meant to him returning to purgatory; especially
since he did not intend to go back to seclusion, but to take up his
residence in this house in Durban, where he had often lived in past
years. Poppy had gathered from Kykie that before he "got his mark," as
she curiously expressed it, and went to live at the old white farm,
Abinger had kept house in Johannesburg and Durban; had lived for a part
of the year in each house, and was well known in both places. So that
coming back would cause him all the torture of meeting old friends who
had known him before his disfigurement. He would have to run the
gauntlet of familiar eyes grown curious and questioning.

"Why should he have chosen to come back at all to the place of his
torment?" Poppy wondered. "It would surely have been simpler and easier
to have settled in Italy or somewhere where he knew no one, and would
not be noticed so much. It can only be that Africa has her talons in
_his_ heart, too; she has clawed him back to her brown old bosom--he
_had_ to come."

As Poppy sat in the verandah thinking of these things, she heard the
_boys_ in the room behind her clearing the luncheon-table, and talking
to each other in their own language. Either they had forgotten her or
they thought she could not hear.

"Where has _Shlalaimbona_ gone?" asked Umzibu; and Babiyaan answered
without hesitation:

"He has gone to the _Ker-lub_ to make a meeting with _Intandugaza_ and
_Umkoomata_."

Few things are more amazing than your Kaffir servants' intimate
knowledge of your affairs, except it be their absolute loyalty and
secrecy in these matters outside your own walls. Abroad from home their
eyes and ears and tongue know nothing. They are as stocks and stones.
They might be fishes for all the information they can give concerning
you and yours.

Also, whether they love or hate or are indifferent to him they serve,
they will infallibly supply him with a native name that will fit him
like his own skin. Sometimes the name is a mere mentioning of a physical
characteristic but usually it is a thing more subtle--some peculiarity
of manner or expression, some idiosyncrasy of speech--a man's secret sin
has been known to be blazoned forth in one terse Zulu word.

It must not be supposed, however, that South African natives are as deep
in mysterious lore as the Chinese, or as subtle as Egyptians. The fact
is merely, that like all uncivilised peoples they have a fine set of
instincts; an intuition leads them to nearly the same conclusions about
people as would a trained reasoning power. Only that the native
conclusion has a corner of the alluring misty veil of romance thrown
over it, while the trained reason might only supply a cold, hard, and
perhaps uninteresting fact.

Instances are, where the meaning of a native nickname is too subtle for
the nominee himself--though any Zulu who runs may read and understand.
If Luce Abinger had asked his servants why they called him
_Shlalaimbona_, they would have shrugged shoulders and hung their heads,
with a gentle, deprecating gesture. Being questioned, they would look
blank; being told to get out and go to the devil, they would look
modest. Afterwards they would exchange swift dark glances, and smiling,
repeat among themselves with a gesture of stabbing: "_Shlalaimbona!_"
Literally this word means--_stab when you see him_. What they meant by
applying this name to Abinger, God and themselves knew best. Poppy had
often pondered the reason, but she had never made any inquiries for fear
it might have something to do with Abinger's scar. For another thing,
Abinger desired her never to talk to the _boys_.

"Keep them at a distance: they will be all the better servants," was his
command; and in this, as in most things, Poppy found it wiser to obey
him.

Babiyaan continued to give interesting information to Umzibu.

"Just as _Shlalaimbona_ was going to get into the carriage, _Umkoomata_
came to the docks and fell upon him with great friendliness. Afterwards
they went to an hotel to drink. Then _Umkoomata_ made a plan for meeting
at the _Ker-luk_ when _Intandugaza_ would be there and others--_Baas
Brookifield_, he with the curled hair and the white teeth; and that
other one, _Caperone_, whose wife is like a star with light around it;
and _Port-tal_, who is always gay with an angry face."

At this juncture Umzibu missed Poppy's coffee-cup, and coming into the
verandah to seek it, the presence of Poppy was revealed to him. He
immediately communicated the fact by sign to Babiyaan, and a silence
fell. Thereafter no more confidences; Poppy was left to speculate upon
the identity of the person who wore so fascinating a title as
_Intandugaza_, which name she translated to herself as _Beloved of
women_. The word _Umkoomata_, too, had a charm of its own.

"That means someone who is very reliable, literally _Sturdy One_. I
should like to know that man," she thought.

At about this time it occurred to her that she was tired and would go to
rest in her room a while. She had risen at five that morning to watch
the African coast and revel in the thought that she would soon have her
foot on her own land again. The excitement of the day had tired her more
than she knew. When she looked in her glass to rake the little gold
combs through her hair, she saw that she was pale. The only colour about
her was her scarlet ardent mouth and the flower at her breast.

She flung off her gown and plunged her arms and face into cold water,
then let down her hair with a rush and pulling her chair opposite her
mirror, she sat down in company she had never so far found
uninteresting--the company of her own reflection.

She did not put on a wrapper. For one thing the day was warm, for
another she found great pleasure in seeing her bare pale arms and
shoulders, and the tall pale throat above them, so slim and young.
Indeed, there are few more beautiful things in the world than a young
throat--be it girl's or boy's, bird's or beast's.

The scarlet flower she had plucked at the door she wore now between her
breasts. She looked at the girl in the glass a long, long time, and the
girl looked back at her. But it was not the look of the woman who counts
and examines her weapons, for Poppy Destin was heart-whole; she had
never yet looked into her glass to see how she was reflected in some
man's eyes. Always she looked to wonder. The transformation of herself
from what she had been only six years ago to what she was now at
eighteen, never ceased to fascinate and amaze her. When she thought of
the tormented, tragic features she had feared to catch a glimpse of, and
looked now into that narrow scarlet-lipped, lilac-eyed subtle face,
crowned with fronds of black, black hair, she believed she must be
witnessing a miracle. When she remembered her aching, thin, childish
body, beaten, emaciated, lank, and beheld herself now, long-limbed,
apple-breasted, with the slim strong grace and beauty of a Greek boy,
she could have shouted for joy and amazement at the wonder of it all.

Yet in the old white farmhouse where she had found refuge and a
remarkable education, she had been able to watch with her own eyes the
change of the famished, wretched little two-leaved seedling into a
beautiful flowering plant.

She had often thought of herself as one set alone in an arid waste to
travel where and how she could, with no help from anyone, and who, in
her terrible travelling had found hidden gifts by the wayside, and
little pools of consolation to lave her wounds and her weary heart,
little patches of flowers to refresh her senses--all left there for her
by the loving forethought of those who had travelled that way before
her; her beauty, her voice, the grace of her body, her clear
understanding, grace of tongue, had come upon her as she travelled to
womanhood--all so unexpectedly; all wonderful gifts hidden deeply away
until she came suddenly upon them, one by one.

At last, through long thinking and piecing together of many broken ends
of memory and disjointed scraps of information concerning her family
history, she had come very close to realising the truth--that she owed
much of what she was to the sweet simple Irish-women who had been her
maternal ancestors. If your grandmother has worn a shawl over her head
and walked barefoot on the bitter coast of Clare with a smile on her
lips and a melody in her heart, she had something better to bequeath to
you than money or possessions: her song and her smile will come down
through the years and make magic in your eyes; her spirit will trample
your troubles underfoot. If your mother has laid her heart in a man's
hands, and her neck under a man's feet, and died for want of his kisses
on her mouth, she, too, will have had something to bequeath: a cheek
curved for caresses, lips amorously shaped, and sweet warm blood in the
veins.

And there was more that Poppy Destin did not know. She was only eighteen
and could not know all her gifts yet--some women never know them at all
until they are too old to use them! She had unwittingly left uncounted
her biggest asset, though it was signed and sealed upon her face--the
sign and seal of Ireland. Ireland was in the frank, sweet eyes of her;
in the cheek-bones pitched high in her face; in her branching black
hair; in her soft sad voice, and her subtly curved lips. Though she had
never seen that sad, lovely land, she was one of its fair daughters:
there lay her beauty; that was her magic.

Presently she left her glass and going to the load of trunks which had
been piled up inside the door, she took her dressing-case from the
summit of the pile, and unlocking it, extracted a little white
vellum-covered note-book. Sitting down before her writing-table she
opened the book at random and kissed its pages with a rush of tears and
a passion that always surged in her when she touched it. For it
contained the story of her childhood, sung in little broken, wretched
songs. Her blurred eyes looked from one heading to another:

             "My heart is as cold as a stone in the sea!"
             "My soul is like a shrivelled leaf!"
             "The woman with the crooked breast."

This was the title of old Sara's story made into a little song.

Poppy Destin dreamed of being a great writer some day; but she knew,
with the sure instinct of the artist, that even if her dream came true
she could never surpass these little studies in misery; these cries of
wretchedness wrung from a child's heart by the cruel hands of Life.

Nothing had ever yet been able to wipe from her mind the remembrance of
those days. For six years she had lived a life in which fresh events and
interests were of daily occurrence; and like a blighted seedling
transplanted to a warm, kind climate, she had blossomed and bloomed in
mind and body. But the memory of those days that had known no gleam of
hope or gladness hung like a dark veil over her youth, and still had
power to drive her into torments of hatred and misery. Her soul was
still a shrivelled leaf, and her heart as cold as a stone in the sea.
She was very sure that this should not be so; she knew that she was
incomplete. The instincts of her artist nature told her that somewhere
in the world there must be someone or something that would wipe this
curse of hatred from her; but she had never been able to find it, and
she knew not where to seek it. Art failed her when she applied it to
this wound of hers that bled inwardly. Despairingly she sometimes
wondered whether it was religion she needed; but religion in the house
of Luce Abinger was a door to which she found no key.

Often, abroad, she had stolen away and knelt in quiet churches, and
burnt candles in simple wayside chapels, trying, praying, to throw off
the heavy, weary armour that cased her in, to get light into her, to
feel her heart opening, like a flower, and the dew of God falling upon
it. She had searched the face of the Madonna in many lands for some
symbol that would point the way to a far-off reflection in herself of

               "The peace and grace of Mary's face."

She had knelt in dim cathedrals, racking her ears to catch some note in
gorgeous organ strains or some word from the lips of a priest that would
let loose a flood of light in her and transform her life. But always,
when the ecstasy and exaltation had passed off, and the scent of incense
no longer wrapped her round, she could feel again the cold of the stone
and the rustle of the leaf in her breast. She could hear without
annoyance the bitter fleers of Abinger at religion and priests and
churches, and though they offended her taste, could listen serene-eyed.
She understood very well what ailed Luce Abinger, for she was touched
with the blight that lay thick upon him. His nature was warped, his
vision darkened by hatred and evil memories. His soul was maimed and
twisted in the same cruel fashion that his face had been scarred and
seamed, and he terribly hated God. Poppy often thought of it as an
ironical trick of fate, that she and Luce Abinger--just the two people
in all South Africa, perhaps, who could do least for each other's peace
and healing--should be thrown together to live under the same roof for
many years. In some ways they had served each other well. He had made
his house a refuge for her from persecution, and had been the means of
educating and bringing her to fine womanhood. She, on the other hand,
had come into his life at a time when he was on the verge of madness and
when it meant everything to him to have some interest that would tear
his thoughts from himself and his disgust of life.

The solitude of the quiet old farm, chosen for its isolated position,
was lightened by the presence of the young girl. Abinger had been
diverted to watch the change and development in the small, shipwrecked
vagabond. Afterwards it had first amused, then interested him, to feed
her eager appetite for learning. For three years he had taught her
himself, in strange desultory fashion it is true, but it happened to be
the fashion best suited to her needs and temperament. He imported from
England huge weekly packages of books of both modern and classical
literature, together with every variety of journal and magazine. He
allowed Poppy the free run of all; only, always she must recount to him
afterwards what she had read. A sort of discussion ensued, so dominated
by his mordant cynicism and biting wit that she certainly ran no danger
of developing any _mawkish_ views of life. This for two or three hours
daily. The rest of time was hers to read in or wander for hours in the
lovely silent country, knowing a peace and tranquillity she had never
dreamed of in her early wretched years. The part of the Transvaal they
were in was but thinly populated--a few scattered Boer farms, and a
native mission-house with a chapel and school instituted by a
brotherhood of French priests of the Jesuit order. These were their
only neighbours, and they not close ones.

Abinger had chosen his retreat well.

After three years it had occurred to him to leave the farm and go back
to the world. He had tired of seclusion, and longed, even while he
feared, to be amongst his fellows again. He was not yet prepared,
however, to go back to the African haunts that had known him in the
past, but made for the big open world beyond the seas; and Poppy went
with him as his sister. Wherever they went he never allowed her to make
any friends; only when they reached any city or place where he cared to
stay for any length of time, he at once engaged masters and mistresses
for her, to continue the education that he had by now tired of
superintending, but which, for reasons of his own, he wished to perfect.




CHAPTER II


At five o'clock Kykie appeared with a tea-tray. She had assumed an air
of calm, and her afternoon dress, which afforded a fine display of roses
trellised on a bright blue background, and gave her the appearance of a
large and comfortable ottoman. She cast an outraged look about the room.

"Haven't you unpacked yet, for gracious' sake, Poppy?"

"No, I haven't. Bring the tea over here, Kykie."

She was lying on her bed, which was long and narrow as the path to
heaven, and yet seemed to have grown too short for her, since she was
obliged to perch her feet upon the brass bar across the end.

"Then what have you been doing, in the name of goodness me?"

"Nothing ... just thinking ... pour it out and come and sit by me
here.... I haven't had a word with you yet."

Kykie poured out the tea, and put some little toasted cakes on a plate,
using her fat, yellow hands with extraordinary delicacy. Afterwards she
sat in a chair with the things in her lap, waiting until Poppy should be
ready.

"What is it like here in Durban, Kykie?... How long have you been here?"

Kykie became very important, waggling her shoulders and rolling her
eyeballs.

"More than six months getting this house ready for habitation ... men
working in the garden day and night, for it was a wilderness and the
poor old place all gone to pot, dearest me."

"It looks all right now; I should think Luce was pleased?"

"Never so much as a thank you extremingly."

"Oh well, you know his ways ... but I am sure he appreciates all you do.
He has often said to me while we were away that he wished you were with
us."

Kykie looked well pleased at this, but having passed the tea, she waved
her hands deprecatingly.

"You're just buttering me up to heaven, Poppy!"

"No, I'm not. And he will eat again now he has you to cook for him.
Abroad he used to eat frightfully little, but to-day I noticed he made
an excellent lunch."

Smiles wreathed Kykie's wide and dropsical face, and every tooth in her
head was revealed.

"Dearest me, now Poppy, really? Well! but then I don't suppose they know
how to cook very well abroad in London, do they?"

"Not so well as you, of course," said Poppy smiling and munching toast.

Suddenly Kykie's face became dolorous.

"Did they look at his mark much, for heavenly goodness?" she inquired in
a dismal whisper.

"Not so much. You know, Kykie, the world is full of all sorts of
strange-looking people--especially France and Italy. In Naples, now,
they didn't take the slightest notice of him."

"For goodness' sake there must be some sights there!"

"More tea. It is lovely to be home again and have you waiting on me."

"Ah! I expect you liked it best abroad in that London, now Poppy?"

"Never. I _thought_ I should, but I had forgotten that my roots were
planted out here. As soon as I got out of sight of Africa they began to
pull and hurt ... you've no idea of the feeling, Kykie ... it is
terrible ... and it always came upon me worst in cities. I used to be
sick with longing for a glimpse of the big open spaces with nothing in
view but land and sky ... for the smell of the veldt, _you_ know, when
it is baking hot and the rain comes fizzling down on it; and the early
morning wind, when it has blown across a thousand miles of sun-burnt
grass and little stalky, stripy, veldt-flowers and stubby bushes, and
smells of the big black patches on the hill-sides where the fires have
been, and of the _dorn bloems_ on the banks of the rivers ... and the
oozy, muddy, reeking, rushing rivers! Oh Kykie, when I thought of
Africa, in some prim blue-and-gold continental hotel, I felt like a
caged tiger-cat, raging at the bars of the cage!... In Paris and London
I couldn't bear to go to the big open parks for fear the sickness would
come upon me.... It was like being a wild ass of the desert,
knee-haltered in a walled-in garden."

Kykie might have been an amazingly-arrayed copper idol representing
Africa, so benign and gratified was her smile.

"Tell me some more, Poppy. Where else did you think of Africa?"

"Well, Palermo nearly drove me wild. It has the same hot moist air as
Natal, and the flowers have the same subtle scents. The big spotted
mosquitoes bit like terriers and followed us as high as we could go; but
I couldn't even hate _them_, Kykie, they were so like the wretches we
have out here--there's been one biting my instep all the afternoon." She
pulled up her foot, and began to rub the spot gently through her
stocking.

"I think Norway was the worst of all. The men there have beards and the
same calm eyes as the Boers, and the people are all simple and kind,
just as they were on the farms in the Transvaal ... and sometimes on
the top of a steep still hill I could close my eyes and pretend that I
was on a wild mountain krantz and the hush of the waterfalls all round
one was the hush of the tall veldt grasses waving in the wind.... But
when I looked, and saw only the still green waters of the fjords and
afar off a glacier thrust out between two hills like the claw of some
great white monster ... oh Kykie, I could have torn the heart out of my
breast and thrown it into the waters below."

"Heavenly me! And were there coloured people there too?"

"Not in Norway; but America is full of them, and I hate them for cheats
and frauds ... for I was always listening and waiting to hear some
Kaffir or Dutch word from their lips ... and they never spoke anything
but mincing, drawling American, through their noses, like this, Kykie:

"'Oh say, would _you_ tell _me_ what time this _kyar_ is due to start?'

"Once I saw a boy in an elevated-railway car, who, though he was
magnificently dressed in navy blue serge and wore a brimmer hat, looked
so _exactly_ like Jim Basuto who ran away from the farm, that I said to
him in Kaffir:

"'You had better make haste and come back to the farm, Jim, and mind the
sheep!'

"He simply stared at me, and said to another _boy_, who might have been
a Zulu chief except for his clothes:

"'Say, this one looks to me as if she is dippy. I think she is the new
star at Hammerstein's that _ky-ant_ speak anything but French.'

"Luce was so furious, he used fearful language at the Kaffir, and made
me leave the train at the next station, and wouldn't speak to me for a
week."

Having finished her tea and eaten all the bread-and-butter and cakes,
the girl lay back on her pillow and closed her eyes.

"For gracious' sake, and so you have seen the world!" said Kykie. "And
now you have come back to the old quiet life?"

"Not at all, Kykie. I'm going to persuade Luce to go about here, and
meet people, and let me do the same."

"He'll never do it," said Kykie vehemently. "I can see that he is worse
than ever about his mark."

"But he knows a lot of people here. I don't see how he can keep them
from coming to the house; and I heard the _boys_ saying that he had gone
to the Club this afternoon. Surely that is a sign that he is not going
to shut himself up again?"

"He may go to the Club, but he won't let anyone come here. He has given
me strict orders that no one is to come in the front gates; they are to
be locked and he will keep the key. Everything is to come by the back
entrance and that, too, is to be locked."

Poppy's face clouded.

"Oh Kykie! I wouldn't mind if we were back in the old farm with the free
veldt all round us; but to be shut up in a house and garden--(and with
Luce's devils," she added to herself),--"even if it _is_ a lovely
garden!"

Kykie's face expressed lugubrious sympathy, but she held out no hope.

"You'll have to amuse yourself like you did before, with your music, and
your reading, and writing, and be a good child," she said.

"But I'm not a child any longer. Can't you see how I've grown up?"

"I can see that you won't have to go and find milk-cactus to rub on your
breasts any more," said Kykie, eyeing her with the calm candour of the
native.

Poppy coloured slightly, and made occasion to throw a corner of the
quilt over her bare shoulders and arms.

"For the sake of grace you needn't mind me," remarked Kykie. "Haven't I
watched you many a moonlight night stealing down to where it grew by the
old _spruit_?"

The girl's colour deepened; she gave a wistful little side glance at the
old woman.

"I _did_ so want to be beautiful. I would have dived to the bottom of
the filthiest hole in that old _spruit_ a dozen times a day to make
myself the tiniest atom less ugly than I was. Do you remember that deep
part where the water was so clear and we could see hundreds of crabs
pulling pieces of flesh off the leg of the dead horse?"

"Oh _sis_ yes! I wondered how you could go and look at the stinking
thing day after day."

"I used to be pretending to myself that it was my aunt they were eating.
Oh Kykie! I have some dark caves in my soul!"

"And no wonder, surely to goodness. Never will I forget the night we
opened the door and you fell into the house, all blood and mud, and your
eyes like a _mal-meit's_[3] flaring and flickering like the sulphur on a
match."

  [3] Mad-maid.

Poppy covered her eyes.

"Don't talk about it----"

At this time a telephone bell began to ring somewhere in the house, and
Kykie on her feet in an instant, flew from the room at top speed. She
came back later to say that Luce Abinger had called up to tell her he
would not be home to dinner. Poppy was delighted.

"Oh Kykie! that means that he is dining with old friends; and it will do
him _so_ much good, and he'll want to be cheerful and sociable with all
the world again, and we shan't be locked up any more," she cried all in
one breath. "And now you needn't bother about dinner, but come and help
me unpack, and I'll show you all my clothes and the nice things I've
brought back for you."

"For me, gracious saints!"

"Yes, for you, you wicked old thing; silks and satins of every shade of
the rainbow. You need never dress in anything else any more."

They spent an engrossed hour unpacking, and afterwards Poppy dined
alone, and betook herself to the garden. She knew that she had the whole
place and the whole long evening to herself, without disturbance, for it
was a peculiarity of Kykie's that she could not keep her eyes open after
nine o'clock at night. As for the _boys_, after they had performed their
duties in the kitchen and stables, their time was their own, and they
made the most of it elsewhere than within reach or sight of their
employers.

It was early still, and though the darkness had fallen, the moon was at
the full, and showed to advantage the solemn splendour of the trees, the
long soft stretches of sward, and the festooned jungle-like arbours and
arcades. In many a winding path she lost her way (for the place was of
enormous extent), and had difficulty in locating once more the house or
the gate or any point she was acquainted with. Coming to the gate once
she tried it, and finding it securely locked she shook it with the
sudden fury of a wild thing that finds itself caged. Then she stood
still, and presently two great tears rolled down her face; but
afterwards her wanderings became curiously systematised. Taking the gate
as her starting-post she commenced a _detour_ of the wilderness, keeping
to its outskirts and examining as she travelled every inch of the
enclosing walls. The part which gave on to the main road she found to be
hopelessly impregnable; it had first a high stone wall with a cresting
of particularly sharp and jagged bottle-glass; and further, was backed
by a species of laurel that grew both tall and bushy, and rattled
aggressively if anyone so much as looked at it. Then came a long
side-stretch of thick-set green bushes of what she judged--after
pinching the leaf and smelling it--to be quince, with an undergrowth of
pink pepper. After penetrating this, in a weak spot, and discovering
that the outside rampart consisted of galvanised iron, standing
lengthways and painted dark green, she did not feel so confident, but
she went bravely on, until at last she came to a gate; it also was made
of iron and painted green, but though it was unlocked, Poppy did not go
through it, for she saw beyond, the stables and iron houses that were
evidently the quarters of the black servants. She could hear their
voices and the sound of a concertina. Plainly this was the back
compound, through which all trades-people must make their way to the
house. No doubt there was an entrance at the other side--but it was not
for Poppy! She proceeded. The wall continued of the same quality,
monotonously familiar; then occurred an impassable jungle that it would
have taken a herd of buffalo to make any impression upon. After beating
round this for some time, to the detriment of her trailing white gown,
Poppy pursued her way with a frowning brow and a quivering under-lip.
Next came a hedge of prickly-pear; she turned her head away from this in
disgust. Farmers plant prickly-pears round their gardens to keep out
cattle. It is the most perfect barrier in the world. Certainly, a human
being _might_ cut his way through it; but he would spend the rest of his
life picking from his festering flesh tiny invisible white thorns. On
and on she marched; it seemed to her that the large pale hands of the
pear-hedge flapped mockingly at her. Sometimes she was obliged to make a
wide _detour_ to avoid a clump of trees, or a rockery, or a summer-house
with a pergola leading to it, smothered with vines and passion-flowers
and roses. It seemed that she walked miles and miles. Suddenly she saw
light glimmering through a trellised opening, and ran forward. Her hands
touched cold wrought-iron. It was the front gate! This time, when she
shook it, she did not cry. Her gown was torn, her hair was loosened,
there was a scratch on her cheek and blood on her hands, but she
laughed.

"Ah, my _very_ dear Luce Abinger," she said, "we shall see if you can
keep a creature of the veldt behind a padlock."

Immediately she recommenced a fresh tour of the garden, and though the
long hot day and all its incidents must have told upon her strength, she
seemed to have suddenly acquired fresh life and buoyancy. She had that
within which urged her on--a taste for liberty. At that time it seemed
to her that the whole world was too small a place for a free spirit; and
that if this were indeed the world, she would somewhere find some
desperate edge and leap over, even if it should be into the abyss of
nothingness. On this tour she included the arbours and the summer-houses
in her itinerary. The third one she came to was only a small hut of a
place, but it had a long spire to its roof, and from thence trailed and
hung long lines and stalks of the passion plant--everyone knows it:
vine-leaved, with great round cream-coloured flowers, a purple outer
ring divided into ten thousand tiny leaves, signifying the crowd that
gathered to listen to Christ on the Mount; and in the centre,
mysteriously arranged, like the dishes upon the table of some oracle,
the three loaves and the five fishes! They call it the grenadilla in
Africa, and eat its fruit with port wine and cream. Poppy dived in under
the trailing vinery, and entered the hut. All round it had a low seat
running, but everything was old and damp and rotten she could feel by
the touch, and in one place the wood crumbled under her fingers, and
thrusting her arm forward, she was able to feel that it was part of the
wall itself; there was no further barrier beyond.

She had found an exit.

For a time she sat still on the cool mossy floor of the arbour,
trembling a little at the thought of the spiders and strange beasts that
might be dropping upon her from above. At last she nerved herself to the
point of pushing and urging and disentangling the thick partition of
green that kept her in. Her idea was to make an opening without making a
gap; something she could re-arrange afterwards, leaving no sign of
disturbance.

At length she was through, and behold! she found herself in another
garden. Was it a maze too, she wondered rather drearily? A maze without
an opening? But no, there was a pleasing openness of view about the
place. A few bushes and trees, a straggly flower-bed or two. Almost
immediately she came upon a gravelled path; but she did not walk on it,
choosing rather to follow its direction by way of the grass and soft
earth which enflanked it. In the natural course of events a house was
discovered. Quite a simple affair of galvanised iron, painted green,
with a verandah running all round it and heaps of shrubs and bushes and
creepers to hide its nakedness. Its front verandah was full of pale,
heavenly light that was certainly not contributed by the moon; nor could
the words that came floating over the bushes into the garden, be, by the
wildest and most poetic imagination, endowed with a heavenly meaning.

"Oh, damn it, I'm sick of this rotten typewriter and everything else in
the world. I wish Brookie would type his own beastly law-papers."

Poppy approached with the utmost gentleness, and through the screen of a
bush covered with tiny pink flowers that smelt of musk she surveyed the
scene.

The room itself was terrible as an army with banners. It contained
"gypsy-tables," antimacassars, "what-nots," plush fans upon the walls,
indescribable villainies of wool and paper, a crewel-worked
mantel-border, and every atrocity under the moon. In the midst of all
was a good solid mahogany table, with a typewriting-machine on it, and
seated before this was a girl. For pity of herself Poppy was glad to see
another girl; and more especially a girl who, like herself, appeared to
have reason to be bored with her surroundings and the general management
of the universe. In the enthusiasm engendered by a fellow-feeling, she
had an inclination to march in and take the girl to her heart, but after
a further survey she changed her mind.

In a large, ripe fashion, the girl was very good-looking indeed, with a
tall and generous figure of the kind that attracts prompt and frank
attention from the generality of men, but is not deeply admired by other
women. Her face was of a familiar Colonial type, large-featured but
well-shaped, with big brown eyes, rather inclined to roll, suggestive of
what is known as "a dash of colour"; a mouth of the kind that expresses
nothing at all until the twenties, when by the aid of a _retrousse_
nose, grown unaccountably coarse it suddenly expresses things which
should be left unexpressed; a round, rather plump chin, and masses of
dark hair which had been sadly maltreated by curling-irons, and had a
dusty appearance. On the whole a handsome girl, probably good-natured
enough for the ordinary purposes, and of a personality pleasing enough
for an ordinary acquaintance.

Certainly not a girl to be made a friend of, thought Poppy, and decided
that she would go no further.

"I'll wait and see first if Luce is going to let me out to meet nice
people," she thought. "If he doesn't, this girl may help to pass away an
idle hour sometimes, and she might serve as one of the characters in my
novel. At any rate she could teach me to use the typewriter, and I
could teach her not to live in a chamber of horrors."

With these reflections she stole back soft-footed in her tracks, and
through her little exit-hole, which she covered up with the greatest
care and skill, for fear that in the future it should prove to be her
only mode of entrance into the world of men and women she longed to
know.

For a whole week she refrained from broaching to the tyrant of the house
the subject which lay uppermost in her thoughts. For one thing she
thought it would be well to allow him to regain some semblance of good
humour; for another she wished to give him full opportunity and time to
make daily excursions into the town and lunch and dine with his friends,
so that she might have some grounds for the reproaches she meant to
level at him when she demanded freedom. In the meantime she was absorbed
in affairs which included the inspection and re-arrangement of every
room in the house, excepting only Abinger's, which she never ventured
near. Touches of her personality soon lay upon everything, from the
chintzes in the drawing-room which she had chosen herself at Waring's,
and sent out to Kykie for the making, down to the curtaining of Kykie's
own bedroom windows with some cobwebby snowy muslin she had bought in
Shanghai. She spent several hours every day at the piano, playing old
Irish melodies, for which she had a passion, and of which she had made
an enormous collection; but she always waited until Luce was out of the
house, for he had a peculiar aversion to melodies of any kind and more
especially Irish melodies. He said:

"There may have been something in them when the strolling poets played
them on their harps, but since that fellow Moore made them pretty, I
consider them damned mawkish."

So Poppy kept her melodies to herself. The rest of her time was divided
between studying literature, writing, dreaming and wandering in the
garden, which became dearer to her day by day.

At last, one evening, on hearing from Kykie that Abinger would be dining
at home, she made herself look as charming as possible in a pale maize
satin gown with a wreath of green leaves on her hair, and went down
prepared to do battle.

Luce Abinger was already in the drawing-room, standing at one of the
French windows, staring out into the garden--a sombre, solitary figure.
She noticed, as often before, how tall and well-built he was, and the
fine line of his head under the smooth, fair hair. He always looked
distinguished and well-born in evening-dress. At the sound of Poppy he
turned, and the lights shining on his maimed and distorted face, showed
her that he was entertaining at least seven devils. A mental shiver
passed through her and hope fell several degrees; but she advanced with
a serene smile and a gay word. She had long ago learnt to control the
expressions of her face, so that he might not guess the mingled terror,
pity, and repulsion he often roused in her; and though she knew that in
most things he had intuition as cruel as the grave, she believed that in
this, at least, she was able to deceive him.

The second gong had not yet sounded. She sat down at the piano and ran
her fingers up and down the keys by way of bracing up her nerves.

"Luce," she began, "I hope you are in a good temper, for I want to talk
to you very seriously about something."

He gave a croaking sort of laugh.

"Oh certainly. I am at my very b-best. It is only necessary for you to
p-play an Irish melody to have me p-purring at your feet. _Il ne
manquerait plus que ca._"

This was inauspicious, but Poppy refused to be daunted; and the gong
sounding at this moment, she rose and put her hand upon his arm, saying
cheerfully:

"That's right, come along then, we'll talk it over in the dining-room."

His smile was grim. They sat down to dinner, and Babiyaan and Umzibu,
arrayed in white, hovered over them like guardian angels. Abinger ate
little and said nothing. Only when the _boys_ were not in the room he
fixed his eyes on Poppy in a curious way that caused in her a sensation
of indescribable discomfort and annoyance. Once, for some unknown
reason, she found herself remembering how she had covered herself up
with the bed quilt from Kykie's eyes, and wishing that she had it round
her now. She had never felt like that in a low gown before, and she
could not understand it at all. For a time it quite unfitted her for the
task she had in hand, but the idea occurring to her that this was
perhaps what Luce intended, she plucked up heart again, and with the
fruit fired her first shot.

"Luce, what are you going to do about getting me a chaperon?"

He gave a little jerk of his fruit-knife, so that she knew that he was
taken unawares, otherwise he remained undisturbed by what she supposed
must be something in the nature of a bomb-shell going off under his
nose. He did not, however, proceed with the business of peeling his
peach, and on giving him a swift side-glance, she found that he was
smiling at her. Now, his smile was at no time an alluring affair, but
when it was field day for his devils----!

"Am I not a sufficiently p-proper and responsible p-person to have the
care of your young white s-soul?" he inquired blandly.

She knew _that_ mood. Perhaps, after all, it would be better to postpone
the discussion; but then, sometimes these fits of fury and rudeness
lasted for months. It was impossible to wait all that time.

"I am not particularly concerned about my soul," she answered
carelessly, dipping her fingers in the fine Venetian bowl before her and
drying them delicately. One of Abinger's devils betrayed itself by
laughing loudly and with character, but she did not even wince.

"Your young white b-body, then?" He pushed back his chair from the table
with a horrible scrench on the polished floor.

"You talk like some odious sultan, but you forget that I am not a
slave," she flashed back at him.

She pushed her chair from the table also, and loosening from her wrist a
little painted inlaid fan which she had bought from a street-seller in
Algiers, she essayed to cool her flushed face.

"Cigarettes, Babiyaan!" she said. "It is very hot; I think I will smoke
out in the garden," she finished coldly to Abinger.

But he had risen too, and lounged in the doorway leading to the
verandah.

"Oh, p-pray let us finish this interesting discussion."

They stood looking at each other for a moment: she, quite collectedly;
he, smiling with his eyes and sneering with his mouth. Babiyaan, well
aware that she was not allowed to smoke, knew better than to hand her
the cigarettes, but placed them on the table and discreetly retired.

"There is no discussion, Luce," she said quietly, though her voice
contained a tremor. "I simply want you to realise that it is impossible
for me to go on living like this for ever. It isn't fair...." she added
petulantly. He said nothing, only smiled. She regained her dignity and
spoke more gently:

"I am a woman now, Luce, and it is only natural that I should wish to
know other women--and men too."

At that he laughed raspingly.

"Why d-drag in the women?"

She looked at him scornfully. It was ridiculous of him to pretend that
men meant more to her than women.

"It is unreasonable of you to expect me to spend my youth in secrecy and
seclusion, just because you--" she stopped hastily.

"Go on!" he said with a devilish gaiety. "'Just because _you_ happen to
have a face like a mutilated b-baboon'--was that what you were going to
say?"

"Oh Luce, you _know_ it was not! Because ... because ..." she stood
stammering with distress, while he stood grinning. "Because _you_ don't
happen to care for the society of other people--was what I was going to
say.... Don't think," she went on appealingly, "that I don't appreciate
all you have done for me. I remember it every day and every night.... I
shall never forget it ... and though I know I can never repay you, I
will show you all the rest of my life how grateful I am.... But I don't
see what difference it would make to you to let me know a few people ...
you have so many friends ... surely you know some nice women who would
call on me----"

He broke out in a harsh voice, smiling no longer. "You are mistaken; I
have no friends. The whole thing is out of the question and impossible."

"I don't see why it should be at all," she pursued valiantly; "if you
get me some pleasant woman as a chaperon."

"In God's name what do you want with women?" he burst out. "A g-girl
like you will never find a friend amongst them. They will hate you for
your face, and your brains, and your youth.... They are d-devils
all--lock, stock and barrel.... They'll rip you open and tear the story
of your life out of you; if they once find out that you are a South
African they'll never rest until they have nosed out the whole thing,
and then they'll fling the t-tale to the four winds and the first thing
you know you'll have your Bloemfontein aunt bearing down on you----"

"Oh Luce! I don't believe they're as bad as all that----"

"Then don't believe it," he retorted, with the utmost rudeness. "But
understand one thing, I'll have no she-devils round this house."

"Very well, let them be he-devils," she flung back at him. "I am
accustomed to those."

At that he stamped away from her towards the other door, gesturing with
rage, and throwing broken words in her direction.

"Isn't my life bad enough already?... Oh Hades!... I wouldn't stand it
for a minute ... curse all women ... don't ever talk to me about this
again ... I tell you.... It's monstrous ... a lot of thieves and
blackguards.... You're driving me out of my own house ... I shall go to
the Rand to-morrow ... why, by God, I!..."

The door closed with a crash behind him.




CHAPTER III


At two o'clock one afternoon Sophie Cornell walked into her sitting-room
and flung upon the table by the side of her typewriter a great roll of
MSS. She was gorgeously attired in a hat massed with roses of a shade
that "never was on land or sea," and a furiously befrilled gown of
sky-blue silk-muslin. But her face was flushed and heated, and her
eyebrows met in a scowl of decided ill-temper. Opening a door that led
through a long passage to the kitchen, she shouted:

"Zambani! Zambani! _Checcha_ now with my lunch. Send Piccanin to lay
table. _Checcha wena!_"

She flung her hat into one chair and herself into another, and stared at
a telegram which she spread out before her.

"'Sorry can't come,'" she read, muttering; "'something better turned up;
you understand!' Yes, I understand well enough! Just like the rotter to
study her own convenience and throw me over at the last moment. What am
I to do _now_, I'd like to know?"

She lolled in her chair and glared angrily at a small black _boy_ in a
blue twill tunic and short blue knickers above his knees, who was laying
a cloth on one end of the table.

"Is there any soda in the house, Piccanin?" she demanded; and when he
signified yes, ordered him to fetch it then and be _checcha_. In the
meantime, she rose and unlocked from the sideboard a bottle of whiskey.

Lunch was a slovenly meal, consisting of burnt mutton-chops, fried
potatoes, and a beet-root salad liberally decorated with rings of raw
onion. Miss Cornell, however, ate heartily, and enjoyed a
whiskey-and-soda. She then proceeded to attack a wobbly blanc-mange
beringed with strawberry jam. Occasionally she demanded of some
invisible personage:

"And what am I going to do _now_, I'd like to know?" and the scowl
returned to her brows.

Suddenly, upon the front door which stood slightly ajar fell a soft
knock. Miss Cornell's hands slipped to her hair, the scowl disappeared
from her face, and in a high affected voice she called:

"Come in!"

Entered, with a shy and demure air, a girl dressed in the simplest kind
of dress made of thin black muslin, with a white fichu over her
shoulders falling in long ends below her waist. Her large white-straw
hat had round it a wreath of lilac, which was of exactly the same colour
as her eyes. Her lips were amazingly scarlet.

"I beg your pardon," she said in a soft, entrancing voice. "I am sorry
to disturb you at your lunch----"

"That's all right," said Sophie affably; "I'm just done. Do sit down!"

The girl seated herself daintily. Sophie, observing that she wore no
jewelry of any kind except a ring, in which the diamond was so large
that it must surely be paste, decided that her visitor must be "hard
up." She (Sophie) had not much of an opinion of that "black rag of a
gown" either, but she thought she detected the faint murmur of a silk
lining as her visitor moved. The lilac eyes looked at her winningly.

"I heard that you had a typewriting machine," she said, "and I wondered
if you would be so good as to do a little typing for me--" She indicated
a tiny roll of writing which she held in her hand. Miss Cornell sat up
with an air.

"Oh, I don't take in work!" she said perkily. "I couldn't be bothered
with that sort of thing. I'm _sekertary_ to a gentleman who has an
office down town."

"Lilac Eyes" regarded her calmly and did not seem overwhelmed by the
importance of this communication.

"What a bother!" said she serenely.

Miss Cornell became languid.

"I get an enormous salary, and I have more work than I know how to get
through already. Indeed, I am trying to get an assistant."

"Really?" said the other girl. "I wonder if I would suit you?"

"You!" Miss Cornell's face lit up with sudden interest and eagerness.
She surveyed the other again. _Of course_, she was only a "hard-up" girl
looking for work, and that air of gentle insolence that Sophie had been
conscious of, was, after all, only "side" stuck on like the rose in the
front of the simple black gown to hide poverty. Upon these reflections
Miss Cornell's air became exceedingly patronising.

"You? Well, I don't know, I'm sure. Can you type?"

"Not at all. But I daresay I could soon learn."

"Oh well! I couldn't give you much salary if you are only a beginner."

"I shouldn't want any salary," said "Lilac Eyes"; but added quickly, as
she saw the other's look of amazement: "At least, not for some months.
If you would allow me to use your machine for my own work sometimes I
should be repaid."

At this Sophie had neither the wit nor the patience to conceal her
satisfaction. Her haughty air departed and she beamed with delight. She
had suddenly seen a clear way through a very difficult _impasse_.

"You'll suit me down to the ground," she declared joyfully. "When can
you move in?"

"Move in?" the other gave her a wondering smile. "Oh, I couldn't come to
live--only for a few hours every day."

Sophie's face clouded again, but in a moment her eyes took on the
absorbed look of a person who is rapidly reviewing a difficult
situation. Presently she said:

"Well, perhaps that wouldn't matter so much if you wouldn't mind
_pretending_ sometimes that you live here."

The other girl looked puzzled.

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand."

"Well, if there's any chance of you're doing as I ask you, I'll
explain," said Sophie; "but, of course, I don't want to talk about my
private affairs if it's no good. There's nothing in the reason for
_pretending_ that you need object to," she added boldly. "What is the
reason you can't come and live? Got a sick mother, or an old aunt, or
something?"

The other hesitated for a moment, then her lovely lilac eyes took on a
curious expression.

"Yes, I have an aunt," was her odd answer, but Sophie was no acute
reader of eyes or odd answers.

"More fool you," said she cheerfully. "I'd like to see the old aunt
who'd get _me_ to support her. Well, all right now, if you think you'll
come I'll tell you the whole thing."

"Yes, I think I'll come. But as I have said, it will only be for a few
hours daily; sometimes in the mornings, more often in the afternoons."

"That'll do all right. Have a whiskey-and-soda and we'll talk it over."

"I don't care for whiskey, thank you," said "Lilac Eyes"; "but I am very
thirsty, and will have some soda, if I may."

Sophie shouted to Piccanin to bring another glass, and pushed the soda
and lemons across the table.

"Make yourself at home," said she affably; "but I hope you're not one of
those asses who don't drink!"

"No, I drink if I want to--but not spirits."

"Oh, I know--those old Cape pontacs. Save me from them!" Miss Cornell
looked piously at the ceiling. The other girl, who had never tasted Cape
pontac in her life, only smiled her subtle smile.

Sophie seated herself in a lounge-chair, opposite her visitor, and
crossed her legs, incidentally revealing her smart French-heeled shoes
and a good deal of open-work stocking through which to lilac-coloured
eyes her legs looked as though they were painted red. Piccanin meanwhile
removed from the room the luncheon debris, his bare feet cheeping on the
pale native matting and his long black eyes taking interested glances at
the visitor whenever she was not looking his way.

"And now let's get to business," said Miss Cornell. "First of all, you
haven't told me your name yet."

The lilac eyes were hidden for a moment under white lids, and a faint
colour swept over the pale skin.

"Rosalind Chard."

"Well, I shall call you Rosalind, of course, and you can call me Sophie
if you like. Sophie Cornell's my name. Rather pretty, isn't it?"

"Very," said Miss Chard in her gentle, entrancing voice.

"Well, now I'll tell you: I come from Cradock, in the Cape Colony, but
I've been living all over the place since I left home. First, I went to
stay with my sister in Kimberley. Have you ever been to Kimberley?
_Man!_ I tell you it's the most glorious place--at least, it used to be
before everybody went to Jo ... you know Jo-burg, _of course_?"

Miss Chard shook her head.

"Never been to Johannesburg?" Sophie's tone expressed the utmost pity
and contempt. "Well, but you're an English girl, I can see. Not been
long out here, have you?"

"Only a week or so."

"Great Scott! you've got a lot to learn!"

Miss Cornell took a packet of cigarettes from her pocket and lit one.
She then offered the packet to Miss Chard, who did not, however, take
one.

"Don't smoke either? Och, what! You're not _half_ a good fellow! Well,
take off your hat, then. Do be sociable."

Miss Chard unpinned her floppy white hat and wore it on her knee for the
rest of the interview. Sophie noticed the piled-up crown of black, black
hair; also, the peculiar branching way in which it grew above the girl's
brows. ("I wonder if she uses bay-rum to make it all dry and electriccy
like that?" was her inward comment. "And I'll bet she wears a switch.")

"Well, to continue my tale--I had a lovely time in _darling_ old
Kimberley: dances, theatres, suppers, everything you can think of; then
my sister's husband must needs go off and buy a rotten old farm at the
back of nowhere--Barkly East, if you love me! They wanted _me_ to come,
too, but I said, Dead off! No, _thanks_! I want something more out of
life than mountain scenery."

Rosalind Chard looked at her and could well believe it. At the moment
Sophie reminded her of nothing so much as a full-blown cabbage-rose,
dying to be plucked.

"And so you came here instead?"

"Well, no; first I went to Jo-burg, and I _must_ say I had a heavenly
time _there_; but--well--it didn't suit my health, so I became
_sekertary_ to an old snook called Johnson. He had been in Rhodesia,
poking about in some ancient ruins there, and--oh, my garden
flower!--the stuff he used to give me to write and type! And the way he
used to bully me when I didn't get through it! And then complained of
my spelling, if you please. I didn't stay with _him_ any longer than I
could help, you bet, though the screw was good. But I _must_ tell you,
such fun--just as I was going to leave him I discovered from his
correspondence that he was going up to Zanzibar to make some researches
for some rotten old society or other, so I stuck to him for another
month. I thought I might as well get a passage to Durban for nix. So I
started with him from the Cape, but when the boat touched here, I said,
Good-bye, Johnnie! Oh crumbs! The row he made when he found me
trekking!"

The listener's sympathy happened to be with the old snook, but Sophie
was not asking for an opinion.

"And do you mean to say," demanded the latter unexpectedly, "that you
would rather live with your old aunt than in a sweet little house like
this, with me?"

Miss Chard did not mean to say anything at all as far as her own affairs
were concerned.

"Never mind about me, Sophie," was her reply. "Tell me some more of your
interesting adventures, and how you came to live in this sweet little
house."

Miss Cornell's glance shifted from her new friend. She looked out of the
window, round the room, at the pictures on the wall, at the
typewriter--anywhere but into the two clear wells of lilac light
opposite her, as she answered:

"I rent it, of course. I told you, didn't I, that I am _sekertary_ to a
man down town, named Brookfield. He thinks the world of me, and gives me
a big salary; and then I get other work from a man called Bramham. Oh, I
have more to do than I want, and I really _had_ to get help, so I wrote
last week to a pal of mine up in Jo-burg, and told her to come and join
me. She promised, and I expected her right up till to-day, when I got a
telegram, if you please, to say that she'd got something better. Wasn't
that a low-down trick? And after I had told Brookfield and Bramham and
all! Brookie gave me the morning off to go and meet her, and I waited
for the train and found she wasn't in it, and when I got back to the
office there was the telegram! Fortunately Brookie was gone from the
office when I got back, so he doesn't know that she hasn't come."

"But why should it matter to him and to the other man whether she comes
or not?"

Again Miss Cornell's glance took flight.

"Because of the work, of course--there's such tons to do ... and I can't
get through it all by myself."

Miss Chard watched her narrowly.

"Well, but why do you wish me to pretend that I live here, and am your
friend from Johannesburg?"

"You see, it's this way ... Brookie and Mr. Bramham take an interest in
me.... They don't think that I ought to live alone here, and all that
sort of rot--and if I could show _you_ to them they'd think it was all
right."

Miss Chard looked startled.

"Oh, I couldn't promise to meet strange men! I didn't suppose you would
want me to do that or----"

An exasperated look came over Miss Cornell's face.

"You're not going to back out now, after me telling you everything?" she
demanded angrily, but Miss Chard's scarlet lips took a firm line.

"I don't wish to meet strange people," she said. To her surprise, the
other girl at once became propitiatory and beseeching.

"Well, but I won't ask you to meet anyone else. I'll keep you a deadly
secret. And I can assure you that Brookie and Bramham don't matter in
the least. Brookie is--well, to tell you the truth, he is entirely my
property; he's crazily in love with me, and he won't bother you at all.
Neither will Brammie, if it comes to that. He is an _awfully_ nice
man--everybody likes him, and he's fearfully rich too. He's married, and
his wife lives in England for her health, they say, but of coarse that
must be all rot. Anyway, he never goes into society at all--only has men
friends."

"Well, what does he want here?" asked Miss Chard calmly, watching the
flushed face before her.

"Nothing--nothing at all. It's only a matter of business, and a friendly
interest in me, and all that--and, you see, as he employs me as well as
Brookie, I have to be civil and ask him to tea sometimes."

It seemed to Miss Rosalind Chard that there was more in this than met
the eye, but she was not able to fathom it at present. However, after
listening to another long description of Mr. Bramham's inoffensiveness,
she consented at last to be at the house one afternoon when he called.

"As for Brookie----" began Sophie, ready to open up another chronicle of
guilelessness.

"No, no! I won't meet Brookie, I absolutely jib at Brookie!"

Sophie became lugubrious. "But he knows that you were to have arrived
to-day----"

"Well," said Miss Chard decidedly. "Tell him that I came, but that I am
as ugly as a monkey and as old as the sea. And now I must go, or
my--aunt will be looking for me. I shall try and come in to-morrow and
take a lesson on the typewriter. What time will be best?"

"You'll have to teach yourself, my dear. I go to the office every
morning at ten, and I lunch in West Street, and don't get back until
above five in the afternoon. But I'll bring you all the MSS. there is no
immediate hurry for--and you can do it one day and I'll take it back the
next. We shall get along like one o'clock."

"That's all settled then; good-bye!" Miss Chard had stepped out of the
room into the verandah and was gone before Sophie could remove her high
heels from the bars of the chair in front of her, where she had hooked
them for extra ease and comfort. Inadvertently she listened for the
click of the gate. But the gate did not click. Miss Chard, having got
out of view of both house and gate, made a dash for the tall green hedge
on the right side of the garden. Stooping down, she instantly
disappeared.

A few moments later Poppy Destin sat in the passion-leaved summer-house,
delicately smoking a cigarette and brushing all traces of dust from her
thin black muslin gown. Between little puffs of smoke she presently
spoke to herself.

"Certainly she is a terror ... a common mind, terrible clothes, Colonial
slang ... I don't know that I can put up with her at all ... and those
awful Brookies and Brammies! ... but it will be useful to be able to go
through her garden whenever I want to make a little excursion into the
world ... and, of course, I couldn't be there without some right or
reason ... besides, it will be splendid to learn typewriting, and do all
my own writing ready to send to the publishers ... but what a room! ...
and those roses in her hat! Can such things be?... I must go and see
whether Kykie has my tea ready."

       *       *       *       *       *

A few days later it would have been hard to recognise the sitting-room
of Sophie Cornell's little green bungalow. Books had spread themselves
about the room, the tawdrinesses had been removed, flowers were
everywhere, and a fine vine in a long glass crept delicately up the side
of the mirror above the mantel. When Poppy had hinted that she would
like to change the room a little, Sophie had good-naturedly given her
_carte-blanche_ to do anything she wished, saying:

"It was not _my_ taste either, you know; but the place was furnished
when I came into it and I haven't bothered to do anything since."

The only things Miss Cornell would not allow to be banished were the
photographs of her numerous admirers, which she insisted on ranging
along the narrow wooden ledge running round the room above the dado.
They were in all degrees of preservation--some of them yellow with age
or exposure, some quite new; all were autographed and inscribed. Some of
the inscriptions ran thus: "From your loving Jack"; "To the best girl I
know"; "To one of the best from one of the worst," etc. It was to be
observed that the most ardent _mots_ were merely initialled. But Sophie
was equally proud of them all, and would exhibit them on the smallest
provocation, giving a short narrative-sketch of each person which
included the most striking features of his character, together with a
thrilling account of his passion for her and the reason why she did not
marry him.

"Now, isn't _he_ good looking? Such a dear boy too ... and _generous_!
My dear, that man would have given me the boots off his feet ... but
there--he had no money; what was the good?... He's in Klondyke now ... I
do hope he'll have luck, poor boy...."

"This is Captain Halkett. No, I don't know his regiment, and he never
would give away his photos in uniform, though he had some perfectly
lovely ones.... Someone told me he was a 'cashier' in the Army ... but
that was silly, of course ... there are no such things as cashiers in
the Army, _are_ there? ... he simply adored me ... he gave me this
bangle ... such a darling ... but he was married--or, _of course_----"

"Oh, _that_ is Jack Truman, of Kimberley. Everyone knows _him_ ... a
fearful devil, but most fascinating.... Isn't he handsome? ... such
eyes ... you simply couldn't look into them, they made you blush all
over. The women were all crazy after him, but he told me he didn't give
a pin for any of them except me.... He wanted me to run away with
him ... but he had a wife in a lunatic asylum ... obliged to allow her
forty pounds a month, and he was _dreadfully_ in debt ... they tried to
arrest him at Cape Town, but he got away dressed like a woman ... and
now he is in the Australian Mounted Police, they say.

"And, _of course_, you know who this is? One of the biggest men on the
Rand ... with _thousands_, my dear.... Och! you should see him in riding
kit ... you never saw any one look so perfectly _noble_ ... he was
_madly_ in love with me ... everybody said so ... he told me I was the
only girl who could ever keep him straight ... but he behaved rather
badly.... I always believe some snake of a woman made mischief ... and
when he went to England, one of those English girls snapped him up ...
they live out at Jeppestown now ... and they say she's the _living
image_ of me ... funny, isn't it?... but I think it just proves how he
adored me, don't you?"

Listeners of defective vision and an over-developed sense of credulity
might have believed that Helen of Troy II had come to town--unless they
had been long enough in South Africa to realise that the best way to
enjoy a little quiet humour is to take a Cape-Colonial girl at her own
valuation.

Poppy listened to all with tranquil eyes. She was willing to believe
that it might be true that Sophie was admired and adored and desired.
But in the type of men who formed the army of admirers and adorers and
desirers she could not pluck up the faintest kind of interest. It seemed
to her that it was impossible that any man worth knowing could forgive
the size of Sophie's hands and the shape of her feet, the look about her
mouth, the paint on her face, and the dust in her hair.

She was aware, however, that life in South Africa is too busy and too
eventful to allow men much time for digging into personality--and that
it has to suffice, as a rule, if the surface-metal shines pleasantly
and looks like the real thing. Sophie's surface, no doubt, had an
attractive glitter, but Poppy felt sure that if anyone with the time and
inclination for such occupation had ventured to go a-quarrying into the
nature of Sophie Cornell, the output would be found to be surprising,
even in a land where surprises are every-day fare and the unexpected is
the only thing that ever happens.




CHAPTER IV


In the meantime all went well. Secure in the knowledge that Abinger was
away for some weeks, that Kykie would never search for her except at
meal-times, every day found Poppy spending four or five hours at her new
occupation--typewriting. She had determined that she would master this
art before she went adventuring further into the world that lay beyond
Sophie Cornell's gate.

Sometimes she would arrive before ten in the morning, in time to see
Sophie depart, gloriously arrayed, with the air of one due at the same
garden-party as royalty.

When she inspected the huge rolls of work which Sophie invariably
brought back, she would sometimes wonder if the latter had indeed been
to a garden-party and never put in at the office at all, except to fetch
the MSS.

The little house in the morning hours was always calm and peaceful.
Through the trees of the garden Poppy could hear the world go buzzing
by--the grating of the tram-cars on the lines, the clatter of horses,
and the hiss of wheels going down hill, and an occasional street cry. No
one ever came down the little pathway. Only the click of the machine,
the voices of Zambani and Piccanin, busy with the pots and the pans in
the kitchen and yard, broke the silence; or Poppy's trilling whistle as
she corrected her proofs. By half-past twelve there would be piles of
neat manuscript ready for Sophie to take back the next day, and Poppy
would be speeding home through her own garden to luncheon. Sometimes in
the afternoon she would finish early, and, going out into the kitchen,
would toast buns and prepare the tea, and Sophie, coming home at five
o'clock, would find it laid cool and dainty among flowers on the long
table.

One day, when Poppy had arrived almost directly after lunch, with the
idea of getting in a long afternoon at her own work, she was
disagreeably surprised to find Sophie stalk in a few moments later,
flushed and handsome, and bringing with her a large bale of papers and
the faint but unmistakable odour of good cigars.

Poppy's little nose went up and a warmth ran through her; the smell of a
good cigar unaccountably roused in her a vivid interest in life. For a
moment she slightly envied Sophie, but a glance at the brilliant languid
eyes and heavy mouth changed her mind, and singularly inspired her with
the thought that good cigars were probably often smoked by hateful men.

"Would you like me to order you a cup of tea, Sophie?" she asked
presently.

"No, thanks!" said Sophie, languidly stretching herself in a chair. "I
couldn't drink tea. I've had a most tiring morning. Brookie brought Nick
Capron in, and they simply _wouldn't_ let me work."

After which calmly contradictory statement, she closed her eyes and
fanned herself with a legal-looking document, chosen for its stiffness
from among the papers she had brought, and which were now at sixes and
sevens upon the floor.

At the name "Nick Capron," Poppy gave a little start. How well she
remembered the day she had heard that name from the lips of a beautiful
woman in Bloemfontein! Could this Nick Capron possibly be the "most
fascinating man in Africa" whom the gold-haired heroine was going to
marry? She must try and discover.

"I think a cup of tea would refresh you, Sophie," she presently said.

"_Och ni vat!_ I can't eat or drink when I get worn out like this--I
become a perfect wreck."

Poppy surveyed the healthy, not to say opulent proportions stretched
before her, and could not forbear to smile.

"Oh, you should keep up your strength," she said, with irony entirely
thrown away.

"The only thing that would be the _slightest_ use to me, now," announced
Sophie, "is a glass of champagne--and, of course, I can't have that."

Poppy began to pore over her manuscript. She was in the mood for work
and hated not to take advantage of it.

"I wish I were rich enough to drink champagne whenever I am tired," was
Miss Cornell's next contribution; and Poppy laughed without being
amused.

"You'd soon be bored with that."

"Never!" said Miss Cornell fervently; then relapsed into languor.

"I hope those papers are not important, Sophie, they are blowing all
over the room."

"Yes, they're _very_ important. They're all about a Malay abduction case
which a friend of Brookie's is defending in the Courts next week. It's
the greatest fun, Brookie and Capron were shrieking over it this
afternoon."

"Is Mr. Capron a lawyer?"

"Oh, no--he isn't anything; just a pal of Brookie's. He's a
Johannesburger, but he has a house here as well, and _tons_ of money,
and a lovely wife--a perfect stunner, my dear--Brookie says she is the
loveliest woman in Africa; but Capron has always got his eye on some
other woman. By the way, Rosalind, to-day he was describing a girl he
had seen in a rickshaw, and from the description I feel sure it was
you. Your particular style of beauty appears to have struck him all in a
heap."

Miss Cornell made this statement as though she thought it humorous,
which, indeed, she did, for that anyone should admire a girl so unlike
her own type, and her own idea of beauty which that type represented,
seemed to her really funny and incredible. Yet she looked intently now,
and observed, so far as in her lay, "with the seeing eye," and for the
first time since they had met--the girl before her. Nick Capron's
unmistakable enthusiasm had made a great impression upon her.

"He said that you were alone in a rickshaw," she told Poppy, "and that
he and Mrs. Portal were walking together and met you. And Mrs. Portal
said you looked like a Burne-Jones dressed like a Beardsley poster. What
rot these society women talk! Who can understand a thing like that?"

"What is Mrs. Portal like?" asked Poppy, remembering now the
well-bred-looking woman who had been talking about Burne-Jones to the
man with the dissipated eyes on the day of her arrival.

But Sophie took no heed of the question. She was closely and furtively
regarding Poppy, and thinking: "Has she any attraction for men, I
wonder? She's not a bit smart ... and so pale ... and yet, and yet ..."
Here Sophie's expression of thought gave out. If she could have
expressed it, she would have added: "She is pale, and yet glows as
though something within her is alight."

"I hope you did not tell him anything about me?" asked Poppy suddenly.

"No, I did _not_!" said Miss Cornell emphatically, and her annoyed look
as she said it brought a ring of laughter from Poppy and a lovely
mischievous glimmer to her eyes.

Suddenly Sophie sprang up.

"Great Scott! I _quite_ forgot to tell you--Brammie is coming to tea.
That's why I came home so early. Do buck up, old girl, and make things
look nice. Your papers are all over the place. I want the room to look
as nice as possible for old Brammie."

"Oh! blow Brammie," thought Poppy crossly. "I was just going to write
something extraordinarily fine; now it will be lost for ever!"

Nevertheless, she put her papers away with a good grace, tidied the
room, laid the tea-things--as only she could--and went out to pluck
fresh flowers for the vases. Sophie stood in her bedroom door buttoning
a plaid silk blouse over her richly-endowed bosom.

"That's ripping," she said approvingly. "Och! but you _can_ arrange
flowers--I'll say that for you, Rosalind. Wouldn't you like to run home
and change your dress, though?"

"No," said Poppy, her head slightly on one side as she surveyed a great
flaming hibiscus-blossom she had just put by itself amidst a heap of
green on the mantlepiece. "Why should I change my gown?" she asked.
"This is quite all right. And the man's coming to see you, Sophie, not
me."

"Oh, he really _wants_ to see you, and I think you ought to try and look
nice. I'll lend you one of my silk blouses, if you like."

"No, no, thank you," hastily. "It's awfully good of you, Sophie, but I
think my gown is quite presentable."

She looked absolutely charming in a pale-blue linen, perfectly laundered
by Kykie; but Sophie considered anything less than silk very ordinary
wear indeed.

Poppy began to arrange her hair at the mantel-mirror, pulling out her
little side-combs, running them through strands of hair, then plunging
them in deeper, so that great waves leaned out on either side of her
face and delicate fronds fell veil-wise just over her eyes. Then she
took a bunch of green leaves and fastened them under her throat with a
big, old malachite brooch she had.

"Well, put some colour on your cheeks, or something," said Sophie
discontentedly.

Poppy flew into one of the fierce little rages that sometimes seized
her. "I will _not_, Sophie! Why on earth should you suppose that because
_you_ have a violent colour no one admires pale women? Do not make the
mistake of thinking that everyone adores your type because _you_ do!"

Sophie, utterly taken aback, was about to make a tart rejoinder, when
there came a light tap with a crop on the front door.

"Anyone at home?"

Sophie flew to her room to complete her toilette, leaving Poppy to
swallow her rage and open the door. A big, grey-eyed man, with a kind
smile, was standing in the verandah. He was in riding-clothes and
carried a crop in his hand.

"Come in," said Poppy, without enthusiasm; adding: "Miss Cornell will
not be long."

"Are you Miss Chard?" said he pleasantly, and came in.

He looked round in a friendly, boyish way that rather charmed her.

"By Jove! How pretty you've made this place look! It's quite different."

"Ah, I suppose you were here before, when it was a chamber of horrors,"
said Poppy coolly. "I never saw a more impossible place in my life."

He looked at her curiously as though greatly surprised. Then he said
carelessly, and rather curtly she thought:

"Oh, yes, I have been here before."

He sat down in one of the easy chairs and Poppy began to put in order
some books that had fallen from the book-case on to the floor. When she
turned she found him still staring at her in that curious fashion, but
without his smile. She missed it because it was a singularly
heart-warming smile.

"The last people here were rather addicted to antimacassars and
glass-shades and things," she said, appearing not to notice his curious
look; "and as it seemed to me a pity to let such things spoil a pretty
room, I put them out."

"Oh!" was all he vouchsafed. She felt chilled. But here Sophie burst
into the room, very magnificent and highly coloured.

"How _sweet_ of you to come, Mr. Bramham," one hand up to her hair and
the other outstretched, while her body performed the Grecian bend.

"Rosalind, _do_ see about tea, there's a dear. I'm sure Mr. Bramham must
be _parched_."

Correctly estimating this as a hint to leave them alone, Poppy retreated
to the kitchen, and did not reappear until she followed Piccanin in with
the tea-tray. Sophie was saying, "_Do_ bring him around, Mr. Bramham. We
should _just love_ to meet him."

Poppy, arranging the cups on the table, had a pardonable curiosity to
know whom she should _just love_ to meet; but she made no remark; merely
sat down.

"Shall I pour out tea, Sophie?"

The latter nodded, but made no other attempt to include her in the
conversation, continuing to monopolise Mr. Bramham entirely.

In a short time Poppy became wearied of this state of affairs. After
observing "Brammie's" boots, his fingers, his tie, the shape of his
lips, his hair, the size of his ears, and his manner of sitting on a
chair (all while she was apparently arranging the cups and looking into
the teapot to see if the tea was drawing properly), the "eternal
feminine," which is only another name for the dormant cat in every
woman, awoke in her. She did not exactly want "Brammie" for herself, but
she decided that he was too nice for Sophie.

Immediately afterwards, Bramham began to realise that there was a
charming personality in the room.

"Do you take sugar?" blew like a cool little western wind into his right
ear; while on his left, Sophie Cornell was bombarding him with
instructions to bring someone to call.

Poppy got her answer first, and a sudden glance of recognition fell upon
the slim, pale hands amongst the tea-cups; then:

"Certainly, Miss Cornell! I'll ask him to come, but I can't promise that
he will. He's not much given to calling."

"Bosh! I know he goes to the Caprons and the Portals--I've seen him with
that horrid Mrs. Portal."

"Ah! you don't admire Mrs. Portal?"

"I don't see anything to admire," said Sophie. "She is not a bit smart,
and her hats are simply awful!"

"She is considered one of the most delightful women in South Africa,"
said Bramham.

"Oh, she may be," Sophie's air was unbelieving; "but I don't see where
it comes in."

She took her tea sulkily from Poppy's hand. Bramham looked bored. The
little western wind blew again in his ear.

"Perhaps her charm is not to be seen. Perhaps it is an essence--a
fragrance----"

Sophie scoffed at what she did not understand.

"Oh, you and your old poetry----"

"That's just what it is," said Bramham. "There's an odour of happiness
about her that infects everyone who comes near her--no one cares a hang
about what she wears or anything like that."

"Well, I don't like her, anyway," said Sophie, now thoroughly
ill-tempered, "and I don't see why you do. She's covered with freckles."

That should have ended the matter, but Poppy's taste for torment was
whetted.

"Perhaps Mr. Bramham doesn't know her as well as you do, Sophie," she
said softly.

Sophie glared. Mr. Bramham looked amused. They all knew that Mrs. Portal
could never be anything but a name to Sophie--that it was really an
impertinence on her part to be discussing Mrs. Portal at all.

"Do _you_ know her?" she retorted rudely.

"Of course not!" answered Poppy. "I know no one in Durban except you,
Sophie--and now Mr. Bramham," she smiled, a sudden smile of great
sweetness at Bramham, and at that he gave her his whole attention.

"That's dull for you, surely!"

"Oh, no! I have plenty to do; and books to read; and how can one be dull
in such a lovely place as Natal?"

The sun came out in Bramham. He was a Natalian and proud of it.

"I believe she gets up in the morning and goes out to see if the sun
rises!" said Sophie, as if denouncing the conclusive symptom of idiotcy.

The cold look with which Bramham had at first surveyed Poppy had now
quite disappeared, and his grey-eyed smile was all for her. He also was
a sun-rise man.

"Do you like books?" he asked. "I can lend you any amount. We get all
the new ones, and as soon as they're read the Lord knows where they go!
I'll send you some up, if I may."

"Thank you, that _will_ be good of you," said Poppy with enthusiasm.

"Send her up all the old poetry books you can find," jeered Sophie.
"Personally, _I_ like a jolly good yellow-back."

Mr. Bramham looked extremely bored by this priceless piece of
information, and more so still when she returned immediately to the
subject of the men she was anxious to meet. Poppy got up and, opening
the piano, began to play a little gay air to which she whistled softly;
she never sang.

"I'm just _dying_ to know him," said Sophie ardently. "He looks as
though he has committed every sin you ever heard of. And how _did_ he
get that fearful scar right across his face? Vitriol?"

The little air at the piano stopped suddenly.

"I really couldn't tell you. He is not communicative on the subject,"
said Bramham drily. "But perhaps he will unfold to you--do go on
playing, Miss Chard!"

He adored music, and had an excellent view of an extraordinarily pretty
pair of ankles under the music-stool.

Poppy complied, but she changed the air to something savage that made
Bramham think of a Zulu war-chant.

"Well, I shall certainly ask him when I meet him. I wonder you haven't
been able to find out! He lives with you, doesn't he?"

"He is staying with me, at present, yes." Bramham's tone was full of
weariness.

"And that dark, strange Irishman everyone is talking about--Carson--he
is staying with you, too, isn't he?"

"Yes."

"Are they great friends?"

"We all know each other very well."

Miss Cornell laughed genially.

"I should say you do--isn't it true that you are called the three bad
men all over Africa--come now?"

"I'm afraid someone has been filling your head with nonsense. Who
spreads these stories, I wonder?"

"Ah, yes, that's all very well, but you know it's true, all the same.
You are three dangerous, fascinating men, everyone says so, and the
Kaffirs have names for you all. What is yours, Mr. Bramham?"

"Kaffirs have names for everybody if one had time to find out what they
were."

"Oh, I know--_Umkoomata_--that's what they call you. Now, what
wickedness can that mean?"

"Who tells you these wonderful things, my dear young lady? You really
have a lot of inside information about everything. You should start a
newspaper." Bramham was slightly exasperated.

"Oh, I know a lot more besides that," said Miss Cornell, shaking her
finger at him archly. "About you, and Mr. Carson, too. He is going up on
a secret expedition into Borapota for the English Government, isn't he?"

"_Very_ secret, apparently," thought Bramham. "How the devil do these
things leak out?"

"Something or other, yes," he said aloud.

"They say the English Government thinks an _awful_ lot of him."

"Yes, he's a clever fellow," said Bramham, casually. No one would have
supposed him to be speaking of a man dearer to him than a brother.
Bramham did not wear his heart where it could be pecked at by the Sophie
Cornells of the world.

Poppy got up from the piano, and Bramham got up, too, and looked at his
watch.

"I must be off," said he, with a great air of business-hurry, which left
him as soon as he got out of the gate.

"Now, don't forget to bring Mr. Abinger next time," Sophie called after
him from the verandah; "and that Mr. Carson, too," she added, as an
afterthought.

Poppy positively blushed for her.

"Sophie, how can you! It was perfectly plain that he did not want to
bring the man--and that he doesn't intend to, anyway. Are you really as
dense as you pretend to be?"

"Bosh!" said Sophie, retiring to the table and beginning to make a fresh
onslaught on the bread-and-butter. "They'll turn up here in a day or
two, you'll see. Isn't there any jam, I wonder?"

"I shall not see anything of the kind. I wash my hands of you and your
men friends. I didn't engage to meet anyone but Mr. Bramham, and I've
done all I promised."

She had done a little more than she had promised, as she very well knew,
but observation was not Sophie's strong point, as her next remark made
plain.

"Now, don't be cross just because he didn't admire you. I told you to
put on my silk blouse, didn't I?"

Poppy laughed her entrancing laugh.

"Do you really think men care for clothes, Sophie?"

"Of _course_ they do! They love to see a well-dressed woman--especially
when they don't have to pay for the dress. Lots of men won't even be
_seen_ with a woman unless she's _perfectly_ turned out. Brookie is like
that; and I'll bet that man Abinger is, too!"

"Is he, indeed! Then remove him far from me. I'm afraid you won't suit
him, either Sophie," with a touch of malice.

"Why not? Don't I pay enough for my clothes? I dress far better than
Mrs. Portal does, anyway. She always has on faded old linens and things,
and I've only seen her in two hats since I came here--both of them
_awful_!"

"I thought she looked extremely nice when I saw her."

"Well, your taste and mine differ, my dear. _I_ think she is a frump.
Capron's wife now _is_ good looking, and always dressed
mag-_nif_-icently. But it makes a person sick to see the way they freeze
on to all the decent men and never let them meet anyone else."

"But do the men want to meet anyone else? If one woman is witty, and the
other pretty, what more is there to be desired?"

"You talk like a book with all the pages torn out, and the cover lost,"
said Sophie irritably.

Poppy laughed provokingly, and lay back in her chair, thinking--the
whole thing was rather amazing. Abinger still here, and moving amongst
pretty and witty women, whilst he pretended to be up in the Transvaal!
His friend _Umkoomata_ the _Sturdy One_, whom she had told herself she
would like to know, here too, visiting Sophie Cornell, whom he plainly
didn't like. Nick Capron! How odd the world was! She began to ponder
about _Intandugaza_, too--whether he was the mysterious dark Irishman
who went on secret expeditions----

"_Man!_ Rosalind," broke in Sophie suddenly. "That fellow Abinger is
just crazy to meet me. We ran into each other as I was coming out of
Brookie's office yesterday, and he gave me a look that made me go hot
all over. He's got those bad eyes that make you feel curly all down your
spine--_you_ know!"

Poppy turned away from her. With the remembrance of certain recent
sensations still burning within her, she could not say that she did
_not_ know; but her mouth expressed weariness and disgust.

"It seems to me that you are talking about some kind of brute, Sophie,"
she said.

"Brute! Oh, I don't know," said Sophie, and laughed. The laugh sent
Poppy out of the room with her teeth in her lip.

"I can't stand Sophie any longer," she said to herself in her own
garden, looking at the rose-red walls of the house and the flaming
flowers on the plant before the door. As she went indoors her thought
changed; she began to smile subtly to herself.

"So Luce is in Durban all the time! He simply pretended to go away, to
avoid discussing that matter of going out with me! And Mrs. Nick Capron!
If I were to go out here, should I meet her? And would she recognise in
me, I wonder, the little wretched vagabond of six years ago?"

She reached her glass, and looked in.

"I think not."




CHAPTER V


Bramham and Carson sat smoking in the verandah of Sea House. Before
them, not two hundred yards away, lay the sea, washing and rippling on
the beach under the full of the moon. Behind them, through the open
French windows a number of large woolly moths were _buzzing_ in and out,
much intrigued by the light that shone through a pink silk lamp-shade,
which had been made and presented to the establishment by Mrs.
Brookfield, on the occasion of her husband's accession to Bramham's mess
for six weeks. The electric-lights had been turned out to keep the room
as clear as possible of insects. It was Bramham's house, and they were
Bramham's native servants who stepped so gently, removing the
dinner-things deftly without clamour, making no sound but the rustle of
bare feet on polished boards and an occasional softly-spoken Zulu word.

Bramham's household included no woman, but there was no better-appointed
one in Natal. Having laid bare the gleaming oak dining-table, one of the
_boys_ solemnly spread down its centre a strip of silver embroidery,
while another placed two silver bowls of roses at each end, and removed
the lamp with the pink shade to a side table. Afterwards the ice-bucket
was replenished and fresh glasses placed near the spirit-tantalus.

Having performed these duties with the greatest decorum and ceremony,
they withdrew silently to the back regions of the house, where their
solemnity slipped from them as suddenly as water slips from a Kaffir's
skin. They disported themselves amongst the pot-washers and dish
cleaners, the cooks and stable-boys, with many a merry snicker and
laugh, chattering like magpies, clicking and clacking, and crying "Hah!"
over the affairs of the _Old Baas_ (the master of natives is always
_Old_ whatever his age) and the various other _Baases_ who sat at
Bramham's board with regular irregularity.

Ha! ha! where was _Shlalaimbona_ to-night, they inquired among
themselves. It is true that he would sleep here in the house of the _Old
Baas_, as he had now done for many nights, but where did he eat
to-night? In the house on the hill, where a white star was hidden by day
and by night?

No; the information was forthcoming that he dined to-night at the house
of Por-tal--he who was gay always with an angry face and had the wife
whose hands could smooth away troubles.

And where, the cook particularly desired to know, was _Bechaan_? He whom
the world called Brookfield--who had slept in the house of _Umkoomata_
for the matter of six weeks now? Where was he to-night? Followed the
tale of the return of Mrs. _Bechaan_, with particulars amazing.

_Vetta_, Carson's personal servant, gave an imitation of the lady, from
which might have been gathered that her chief characteristics were a
kangaroo-walk and a face which in contour and complacency resembled a
camel's.

In the meantime, _Umkoomata_ and _Intandugaza_ smoked in the verandah,
which was like the deck of a yacht, broad and white-planked, and lined
with a long row of every kind of easy-chair, a Madeira lounge, and a
hammock with Union-Jack cushions.

Carson, with his head far back in a canvas chair and his hands behind
it, was smoking a cigar at the mosquitoes, sending them in shrieking
swarms to roost in the roof. Incidentally, he was trying to persuade
Bramham that the fine weather indicated a three-weeks' trip into
Zululand, to get some good shooting.

"I have another three weeks to put in, Charlie, and what is the good of
loafing here, at a loose end?" He gave a glance at Bramham seated by
him, pipe in mouth, hands in pockets, the picture of health and
well-being. "And you are looking really seedy. A trip would do you
good."

Bramham immediately began to think himself precariously ill.

"I know," said he uneasily; "I feel confoundedly slack. I must take a
dose of quinine to-night. A trip would be just the thing to set me up,
damn it!" He stared at the moonlit night, his eyes full of a wistfulness
that was extraordinarily boyish in a man on the wrong side of forty. He
thought of a lovely spot he knew up on the Tugela, where the moon would
just be rising over a great Kop, and he seemed to smell the wood fires
on the night air----

"But I can't get away. I've got a big case coming on next month, you
know." His face changed, the boyishness passed and the business-man
reappeared. "Those fellows in Buenos Ayres are trying to do me up for
five thousand."

They smoked in silence for a moment or so, then Bramham continued:

"My lawyer, of course, wants to see me almost every day on some point or
another. I really couldn't get away at present, Carson. Why not take a
run up to the Rand? By the time you are back I'll have those fellows on
toast, and then we'll go off for a few weeks."

"No," said Carson discontentedly, "everything is confoundedly dull on
the Rand. I was sick of the place when I was there last month."

"What's wrong with it?"

"It is not the same as it was, Charlie. The old crowd has all gone away
or gone to bits--Webb is in the Colony; Jack Lowther is mostly engaged
(I think) in praying that his wife won't be too much for him when she
comes out--she is on the water! The Dales are away. Bill Godley is up
Inyanga way. McLeod's finances are in bits, and he's too busy keeping a
stiff lip to be sociable. Clewer is now Public Prosecutor and has become
a saint. Little Oppy has gone home. Solomon says he has met the Queen of
Sheba at last, and expects that to account for his never being in
evidence anywhere except in the stage box of the Standard Theatre."

"Oh, damn it! disgusting!" commented Bramham.

"And, anyway, the Rand air always chips the edges off my nerves, Bram.
It's too high. Lord knows, I don't feel any too fit now! I believe I
have another go of fever coming on."

Bramham looked at him critically and affectionately. "You _do_ get some
doses, but I hope you're not in for another, Karri!" he said. "By Jove!
When South African fever puts her loving arms round a man she clings as
only fever and a woman can."

Bramham's face was clouded, but there was no real bite in his words. He
had no quarrel with the clinging arms of women, or of fever. But he
blamed these things for the look of bitter discontent and cynicism that
lay across the beauty of the fine face beside him. Carson wore in his
eyes the look, and round the mouth the marks, of one who has "wearied of
every temple he has built"; or, as Bramham's thought expressed itself
with no great originality, yet not without point--the look of a man who
has got to the core of his apple and finds it rotten.

"It's that look," Bramham told himself, "that gives women an instinct to
comfort him; while if they had only let him alone from the first, maybe
it wouldn't be there at all! And you can't comfort a man for his soul's
bitterness, as though he has the stomach-ache. Besides which, Karri
takes to comfort badly; he'd rather get a smack in the teeth any day
from someone he can hit back!"

Thus Bramham, musing and staring at the sea. In spite of its marred
beauty, Carson's face seemed to him finer than that of any man he had
ever known--and he knew most men of any consequence in South Africa.
Meanwhile Carson, giving him another glance, wondered what kept him
quiet.

"Thinking of some woman, I suppose!"

Presently Bramham did turn his mind to his own affairs.

"I want your advice about something, Karri."

"Fire away, Bram; let's hear all about her."

At this Bramham, for reasons of his own, became slightly annoyed.

"Don't be an ass, Carson."

"Don't be a rake-hell, Bram. You know quite well you are always at some
apron-string."

Indignation dried up Bramham's eloquence.

Carson mocked him further.

"Why don't you lay the 'deadly doing' down, before it lays you out?"

"Take your own excellent advice, my dear fellow. Or give it to Abinger;
perhaps he needs it," said Bramham.

"Poor old Abinger! I don't think it would be of much use to him. He
scarcely does m

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