Poppy Part 30

"I am far from despising it, Mr. Bramham," she said at last, very gently. "But I happen to want you for a friend, not an enemy."

Bramham did not see his way quite clear through this. However, he declared stoutly that he had never been a woman's enemy yet.

"Then you must often have been your own," she retorted, with a little glint of bitter wisdom. Thereafter, the conversation flagged again.

Bramham had missed his cue and his broad shoulders took on a somewhat sullen expression. Poppy had the hopeless feeling that she had lost a lover without finding a friend, and the thought filled her with sadness.

Only G.o.d and she knew how much she needed a friend; and she was sure she could find no stronger, firmer rock to her back than this big, kind man, if she could only get him away from these shoals of emotion on to the firm ground of friendship.

But Bramham was sighing sulkily, and flipping with his forefinger at the end of his cigar, as though he had no further use for it. Obviously, he was thinking of making a chilly departure. Suddenly she put out her hand and touched his, resting on his knee.

"You are quite right, I _am_ cold," she said softly; "starving with cold; and you can never know how charming and attractive your fire looks to me, but--after all, the best seat is already taken isn't it?"

Bramham stared hard at her, swallowing something. This was the first time his wife had been mentioned between them. She did not falter.

"Don't you think I am nice enough to have a fireside of my very own?"

She spoke with the soft bird note in her throat, and her smile was a wistful thing to see.

Bramham's other firm hand came down on hers, and gave it a great grip.

"By Jove! I do. And I hope you'll get the best going."

A wave of grateful warmth rushed over the girl at his words. Her eyes filled with tears.

"Thank you; thank you!" she cried brokenly; and added, on a swift impulse: "The fire I want seems to me the most wonderful in the world--and if I can't be there, I'll never sit by any other."

She did not attempt to stanch her tears, but sat looking at him with a smiling mouth, while the heavy drops fell down her cheeks. Bramham thought that, because of the smile, he had never seen any woman look so tragic in his life.

"Don't cry; don't cry, dear!" he said distressfully. "I can't bear to see a woman cry. Do you love someone, Rosalind?" he asked, using her name shyly.

"Yes, Charlie," she said simply; "I do. But there is a knife in my heart." She turned from him now, and looked away, that he might not see the despair and humiliation in her face.

"I will be your friend, Rosalind. Trust me. I can't understand at all.

You are altogether a mystery to me; I can't understand, for one thing, how a girl like you comes to be living with Sophie Cornell----"

"I came here quite by accident," she interrupted him. "I have always meant to tell you, though I know that for some reason Sophie doesn't want you to know. I walked into the garden one day, and saw Sophie using a typewriter, and I came in and asked her to take me for an a.s.sistant."

"What! But weren't you a governess to some people in Kimberley, and an old friend of Sophie's in Johannesburg?"

"No, I've never been a governess, and I never saw Sophie until I walked in here some three months ago. The girl you take me for never came at all, and Sophie was glad to have me take her place, I suppose. But, indeed, it was good of her to take me in, and I am not ungrateful. I will pay her back some day, for she is of the kind money will repay for anything." She added this rather bitterly, for, indeed, Sophie never ceased to make her feel her obligations, in spite of daily slavery on the typewriter.

"Well, of all the--!" Bramham began. Later, he allowed himself to remark:

"She certainly is a bird of Paradise!" and that was his eulogy on Sophie Cornell.

"But how comes it that a girl like you is--excuse me--kicking about the world, at a loose end?--How can any fellow that has your love let you suffer!--The whole thing is incomprehensible! But whatever you say stands. You needn't say anything at all if you don't want to----"

"I can't tell you anything," she said brokenly. "If I could tell _anyone_, it would be you--but I can't. Only--I want a friend, Charlie--I want help."

"I'll do anything in the world for you--all you've got to say is 'Knife.'"

"I want to get away from Africa to England, and I haven't a penny in the world, nor any possessions except the things I am wearing now."

"Oh, that's simple!" said Bramham easily. "But have you any friends to go to in England?"

"I have no friends anywhere--except you.

"'I have no friend but Resolution ... and the briefest end!'

"But I don't think my end is yet. I must go away from Africa, when I love it most--as _you_ did, Charlie. There are things to do and things to go through, and I must go and suffer in London as you did. But I mean to win through and come back and get my own, like you did, too."

She jumped up and stood in the light of the window, and Bramham could see that her eyes were shining and her cheeks flushed. She looked like a beautiful, boastful boy, standing there, flinging out a mocking, derisive hand at Fate.

"Life has had her way with me too long, Charlie. Ever since I was a child she has done nothing but cheat me and smite me on the mouth, and beat me to the earth.... But I am up again, and I will walk over her yet!... Love has found me, only to mock me and give me false coin and pa.s.s me by on the other side; but I will come back and find Love, and it will be _my_ turn to triumph. Look at me!" she cried, not beseechingly, but gaily, bragfully. "There is no white in my hair, nor any lines on my face, nor scars ... where they can be seen. I have youth, courage, a little beauty, something of wit--and I can write, Charlie. Don't you think that I should be able to wrest something for myself from the claws of that brute Life--a little Fame, a little Love----?"

"I should just say I _do_," said Bramham heartily. "You're true-blue all through, without a streak of yellow in the whole of your composition."

PART III

Nothing is better I well think Than Love: the hidden well water Is not so delicate to drink.

CHAPTER XIII

Poppy sailed by one of the pleasant small lines that run direct between Natal and England without touching at East London or the Cape.

"If it will amuse you," said Bramham, "to sit down with diamonds at breakfast, and diamonds-and-rubies-and-emeralds at lunch, and the whole jewel-box for dinner, take the Mail-steamer and go by the Cape. And then, of course, there are the scandals," he added seductively.

"Personally I like them; but _you_ look to me like a girl who wants rest, and to forget that there is such a place as Africa on the map."

Poppy agreed. She had travelled by the Mail-boats before, and thought them excellent places--for anyone who values above all things a little quiet humour. Also, persons returning from Africa with little else than a bitterly acquired philosophy, find satisfaction in putting their only possession upon the sound basis of contempt for riches. For herself, not only was she able to sustain life for three weeks without scandals and the elevating sight of millionaires' wives lifting their skirts at each other and wearing their diamonds at breakfast, but she longed and prayed with all her soul for peace, and solitude, with nothing about her but the blue sea and the horizon.

The battle before her needed a plan of campaign, and to prepare that she must have time and rest. First, there must be some bitter days spent in wiping from her mind, and memory, Africa and all that therein was. She realised that if the greater part of her thought and force was afar from her, seeking to follow a man who by that time was deep in the heart of Africa, it would be futile to expect anything great of the future.

Abinger and his soul-searing words must be forgotten too; and Clem Portal's fascinating friendship, and Charles Bramham's kind grey eyes and generous heart. All these were destroying angels. If she admitted thoughts of them into her life, they would eat her time, and her strength, which must austerely be h.o.a.rded for the future.

Courage, resolution, silence--those were three good things, Clem Portal said, to be a woman's friends. And those were the things the girl strove to plant firm in her soul as she watched with misty, but not hopeless eyes, the retreating coast of her beloved land.

She kept aloof from everyone, spending long, absorbed hours of thought and study in some canvas-shaded corner; or swinging up and down the decks, drinking in the freshness of the wind. Before many days were past, care departed from her, and rose-leaf youth was back to her face.

Gladness of life surged in her veins, and the heart Evelyn Carson had waked to life, sang like a violin in her breast. Her feet were on the "Open Road" and she loved it well, and could sing with Lavengro:

"Life is sweet, brother ... there is day and night, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, all sweet things; there's likewise a wind on the heath."

She had yet to find that the G.o.ds love not the sound of women's feet upon the Open Road. Its long, level stretches are easy to the feet of men, but for women it most strangely "winds upwards" all the way, and the going is stony, and many a heavy burden is added to the pack the journey was commenced with. Youth and Love are stout friends with whom to begin the climb, and Poppy knew not that she had a pack at all.

Certainly she suspected nothing as yet of the burden which Fate and her own wild pa.s.sionate nature had laid upon her. So still she went glad-foot. No one who watched her could have believed that she was a girl out in the world alone--a girl breaking away from a past that was a network of sorrows and strange happenings, to face a future that lay hidden and dark.