Poppy Part 3

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 d.a.m.nations 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 G.o.d-mother so. The fact that never a single prize had been won was d.a.m.ning 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 sc.r.a.ped 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 G.o.d lets such beasts as you go on living for ... no good to anyone ... dirty, deceitful little s.l.u.t ...

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 pa.s.sionately that she could hardly bear anyone else to come near. No one had ever wanted Poppy and loved her before, and from her grat.i.tude 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 pa.s.s 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' Inst.i.tute 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' Inst.i.tute 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 m.u.f.fled 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 G.o.d, 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 gra.s.s was all silvery with the heavy dew, and the earth gave up a sweet and lovely smell. G.o.d 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.