Poppy Part 10

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-gla.s.s; 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 impa.s.sable 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 p.r.i.c.kly-pear; she turned her head away from this in disgust. Farmers plant p.r.i.c.kly-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 pa.s.sion-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 pa.s.sion 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 part.i.tion 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 gra.s.s 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, d.a.m.n 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," antimaca.s.sars, "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 coa.r.s.e it suddenly expresses things which should be left unexpressed; a round, rather plump chin, and ma.s.ses 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sion, 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 d.a.m.ned 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 pa.s.sed 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-sh.e.l.l 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."