Poppy Part 12

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 gla.s.s, 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 a.s.ses 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 pa.s.sage 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 a.s.sure 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.