Poppy Part 31

The few quiet pa.s.sengers on board chanced all to be middle-aged, and not greatly curious about the affairs of other people; but they often pondered idly among themselves upon the ident.i.ty of the fleet-footed girl with the face like a spring morning; mildly speculating as to what had happened to her chaperon at the last moment; for they thought it would be ridiculous to suppose that she was travelling alone, except by accident.

Only one person thought differently--the ship's doctor. He had seen her eyes the day she came on board, and he knew a few things about women's eyes. Indeed, it is certain that if Maurice Newnham had given half as much attention to medical science as he had divided between the engrossing subject of women's eyes, and the poker-table, he would not have been preparing black-draughts for able seamen, and treating pa.s.sengers for _mal-de-mer_, in return for a pa.s.sage home. He was a good doctor gone wrong for lack of principles, application, energy, ambition--anything but brains. Ten years of roaming through Africa found him at last kicking its dust from his feet with his achievements and fortune ably represented by a duck's egg, and nothing before him but the prospect, at best, of a post as ship's doctor on one of the big Atlantic liners. He was a square-built man with a clean-shaven face that would soon be fat and loose-jawed. Laziness--physical and mental; intellect gone to rack and ruin; savage boredom with the world in general--these were the things writ large upon him. He detested with all his heart the few worthy pa.s.sengers; the untemptress-like women, and the men who only went to the smoke-room when it was too hot on deck, or for a quiet game of whist. And always he turned his burnt-out eyes to where Poppy sat dewy in the sunshine or swung down the deck--trying to place her and read her story. He was sure that she had a story. He considered her clothes, and her manners, and her walk, distinguished, and in keeping with the general theory that she was a well-born girl accidentally travelling alone. It was only on the evidence of her eyes, as he had seen them the day she came aboard, that he formed the conclusion she was facing life on her own responsibility. He told himself _then_, that they were the eyes of a girl who had come to a bad bit of the road, and though she had wonderfully changed in a few days, his professional eye, blurred though it was, saw still on her the traces of stress and storm.

Now, Maurice Newnham knew all about bad bits of the road. He had stumbled through muddy and broken places himself, and seen others do the same; some dying in the holes they had made, some lying down by the wayside with no heart to start afresh. His keen instinct for a fellow-stumbler was the only instinct he had not deliberately blunted.

Therefore he greatly desired to make the acquaintance of "Miss R.

Chard," as the pa.s.senger-list described her. Moreover, he was attracted by her unusual beauty.

However, it was plain to everyone that Miss Chard did not wish to form acquaintances. When the women made pleasant little overtures, she smiled a kind of cold vague smile, and let _that_ be her answer. And she simply looked through the men. Dr. Newnham got into her way several times on deck and on the companionway, forcing her to meet his eyes, but she remained composed and indifferent under their bold glance. He had almost despaired of ever gaining his end, when chance, the only friend he could lay claim to, intervened.

On a hot day in the tropics the ship's _chef_ had resort to tinned supplies, and amongst other things sent to the luncheon-table was an _entree_, which had the appearance of tongue-in-aspic, charmingly wreathed with lettuce and cress. Most people attracted by the greenery, partook of this dish, and though they immediately discovered themselves to be eating "Sarah Anne Lane," they calmly continued the cannibalistic performance, for "bully beef" is too old and close a friend to be despised by any South African sojourner. However, on this occasion "bully" was an enemy--perhaps the historic Sarah-Anne was really present at last (in portions)--for before night everyone who had partaken of the fascinating bewreathed _entree_ was _hors de combat_ with a mild attack of something in the nature of ptomaine.

Poppy was one of the sufferers, though by no means the worst. She was ill enough to require the services of Dr. Newnham, and to be grateful for them. He was always very grave and curt, never stayed for more than a few moments, or talked of anything but the state of her health. Soon she was up on deck again; but for a few days he continued to professionally superintend her doings. Afterwards he fell naturally into the habit of staying to talk to her. Everyone knows how easily these things are done on board ship. Poppy, after all, was glad to talk to someone. In the few days spent below she had grown weary of herself, and Newnham was an interesting interlude--as interesting as a character on the down-grade always is, if only because of its efforts to hide the wreckage from the eyes of a new acquaintance. But efforts that are not natural cannot be kept up long. The old Adam soon rea.s.serts himself.

Poppy began to get prehistoric peeps of the raw savage that Newnham hid under his professional manner and well-made clothes, and they sickened her. She knew too much about white savages, and she much preferred the real thing--Zulu or Basuto. However, she forgave him a great deal for the sake of the curious things he knew about people in different parts of Africa. He had been everywhere, from the Karoo to the Kalahari, from Boshof to Blantyre, and from Matjesfontein to the Matoppos.

Both in Rhodesia and the Transvaal he had seen history made, and in the telling of these things he possessed that idle eloquence so often found in men of a dissolute type. In Newnham the gift, being grafted upon the trained observation of his student years, was specially striking.

At Johannesburg, his last and latest place of residence, he had been in charge of a native Hospital in one of the mine compounds. He said he had cut off enough Kaffirs' legs there to fill a forty-foot shaft.

"If one of them came to me with a corn, I'd make it into a reason for cutting his leg off," he said malevolently. "I hate the brutes."

"I hate brutes too," retorted Poppy, with the curled lip of disgust.

"You know very little of natives, if you think they all come under _that_ heading."

"Ah!" said he. "I see you have the tender heart that goes with the tender-foot. If you only knew as much of them as I do----"

She probably knew a great deal more, but she left it at that.

Her mind had flown away into the dark deeps of Africa, where a man forged ahead over unbroken tracks, through fevered swamps, with no companions but his faithful _boys_, upon whose courage and staunch loyalty his life must of necessity often depend--and not depend in vain; for "good men" (the expression has nothing to do with morals) trust their _boys_, and are trusted by them to the death.

Ah! with an effort she dragged back her thoughts from across the sea.

That way madness lay! She gave her ears once more to Newnham and the Rand.

He spoke of Johannesburg with the mingled hatred and admiration everyone who has ever lived there feels for that evil, fascinating Monte-Carlo of money, and tragedy, and suffering.

"It is the only place worth living in," he averred; adding: "At least, that is what all the old residents say, and you can understand the emotion with which they say it when you consider that most of them came out as waiters and cook-generals, and blossomed later into millionaire squires and dames of society."

"But they all go and live in Park Lane, don't they?" smiled Poppy.

"Oh! they revisit the scene of their triumphs. It lures them across the sea. A poignant longing comes to them sometimes, even in Park Lane, for the glitter of galvanised-iron and sardine-tins and Nestle's Brand--and the red dust, and the spectral blue gums. But they do precious little for the place that has done so much for them," he sneered. "I should say that with the exception of the Barnato ward, and an open s.p.a.ce for games, not a millionaire of the lot has done anything to beautify or benefit Johannesburg. 'Make your pile and scoot' has always been the watchword. But I suppose it isn't in human nature for a debtor to love his creditor!"

Newnham and Poppy spent many days in talk of Africa. The evenings, which were all blue and gold--sea and sky alike thickly sown with stars--she loved to dream away alone in some shadowy corner, or leaning over the taffrails with the gleam of the phosph.o.r.escent waves reflected on her face. But when Newnham sought her out she would either walk, or have her chair put where a big electric-light blazed on the face of her companion.

"Never sign a paper, or drink water in the dark," was a Spanish proverb well known to her, and she had another of her own:

"Never rest where you cannot see the eyes of a man you distrust."

She was frankly interested in what Newnham had to say, but she distrusted him. Nevertheless, she went ash.o.r.e with him at Teneriffe and they wandered about the narrow debris-strewn streets, and were stared at by the women who wear such liberal coats of powder and rouge upon their handsome olive skins and grow stout so early in life.

Poppy had a fancy to climb the zig-zag road to Laguna, but Newnham looked lugubrious at the idea--probably his muscles had long been out of gear for climbing or any other physical activity--and hastily suggested that the boat would not be making a very long stay. So they roamed about the lower slopes of the hills instead, watched the barefooted women in the washing pools, and did some shopping. Poppy, accustomed in her travels to have Abinger behind her paying for everything she bought, quite forgot that all she owned in the world was forty-five pounds, the remainder of seventy pounds she had allowed Bramham to lend her (she had been obliged to expend twenty-five pounds upon a wardrobe), fell with rapture, upon a lovely piece of Spanish lace, and handed out five pounds without the turn of an eyelash. It was only afterwards that she realised her foolish extravagance. As they were returning to the ship followed by two men carrying baskets of fruit and flowers bought by Newnham, he suddenly observed that her face had become dolorous.

"What's wrong?" he asked in his casual but not offensive manner.

"Oh, nothing!" Then she stood still, seized by a sudden thought. "Do you think the woman would take that lace back again?"

"That five pounds' worth? No--not for a minute. I saw the gleam in her eye when she stowed away your fiver. But why--don't you like it?"

"Oh, yes. I love lace. But I have just remembered that I can't afford it."

"Well, I don't think it's the slightest use going back. But _I'll_ buy it, if you like?"

"You? What for? What would you do with it?"

"Give it to you, of course," he said pleasantly, but she flushed and her manner instantly became cold.

"I do not wish you to buy it," she said shortly. "I like it and will keep it myself."

"I wonder how many times to the minute a woman changes her mind!" he jested, but he was secretly much amazed.

"She's hard up!" was his thought. That side of the picture had not presented itself to his mind before, and it "gave him to think." He later resolved that he would offer to buy the lace from her to give to his sister--and then get her to take it back under the name of a "keepsake" when they reached England.

"I bet that'll suit her book," he cynically thought.

But Poppy did not come on deck after dinner, and the next day she let Newnham see very plainly that she was offended. For two more days she kept the atmosphere about her so frigid that he did not dare venture into it. He found the time singularly blank. There was nothing to do but sit in the smoke-room and curse the day that he was born, between drinks. On the third evening she relented and allowed him to approach her under the blaze of electric-light.

"Why have you been so cruel to me?" he demanded almost violently. "What have I done to make you angry?"

He half expected that she would--as girls generally do--first feign ignorance of his meaning, and, later, allow herself to be persuaded that she had never been angry at all. But she was not of the same kidney as the girls Maurice Newnham had been meeting for the last ten years. She spoke at once, and to the point.

"I thought it extremely insolent of you to offer to give me five pounds," she said, and Newnham, being much taken aback, could only find tongue to utter:

"I swear I didn't mean to be insolent."

"Oh, yes, you did. I hated the way you spoke; and when I remember the way you looked, I wonder that I allow myself to speak to you again."

"I'm awfully sorry," he stammered. "I'd no idea you would take it in such a way. It was an ordinary thing to do, I thought. Most women or girls in Africa would think nothing of taking a little bit of lace."

"I am not at all like most women and girls in Africa," was the cool response. "However, I will say nothing further about it, Dr. Newnham.

Only please, if you care to talk to me, behave yourself--and don't ever mention _lace_ again."

Newnham had never been spoken to in this fashion by a woman since he came to Africa, and he did not take to it at all. But he was afraid to show his resentment for fear she would carry out her threat and never speak to him again. And if she turned her back on him now, he believed he should go mad. It had come to _that_ with him. He was half-crazed with pa.s.sion for this girl who could look at him so composedly and speak to him so contemptuously. But together with his pa.s.sion was bitter rage with himself and with her. He was torn between primitive emotions. At one moment he longed with all the malignity of a mean weak nature to fling coa.r.s.e words at her that would make her crouch before him; in the next he longed only to crouch himself, offering his neck, his body, his soul to her feet.

While he wrestled with his longings and inclinations, breathing hard at her side, she composedly arose and left him with a cool good-night.

He returned to the smoke-room and kept the steward busy for the next two hours; and when at last, by reason of the emphatic dimming of the electric lights, he roused himself to thoughts of bed, he had come to a conclusion and a resolution. Quite an epoch for him!

All the next day he haunted Poppy strangely. He was never far from her, and the look in his eyes stirred her to discomfort and foreboding, although it was not comprehensible to her. Something in his eyes she understood only too well--she began to expect _that_ in men's eyes now!

But what did that half-pitying, half-scornful expression mean? She resented it extremely; but her curiosity was aroused. In the evening, therefore, she let him pull his chair next to hers in the usual corner.

Only, the electric light was gone; the burner had died out, and someone had forgotten to replace it or thought it not worth while to do so, for this was the last night at sea and the ship was to dock on the morrow.

They were creeping near the grey-green English coasts now, and the English weather was sweet and grateful after the heat of the tropics and the dusty land left far behind; but there was a freshness in the late-April air that made Poppy turn up the collar of her coat and take shelter under the lee of her chair cushion.