Poppy Part 2

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 f.a.got.

"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, a.s.serting 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 G.o.d-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' Inst.i.tute, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.s to them, covering Poppy with shame. They were not big hands like Clara's and Emily's but they were rough and coa.r.s.e 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 pa.s.sed 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-cla.s.s 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.