Poppy Part 4

There was nothing to do, and nowhere to go but home. After all, Aunt Lena could only kill her once. Then she would join Ina and see her mother, and hear Irish melodies, and be where it was not cold or lonely any more. She got down from the tree almost cheerfully and made her way through the gra.s.s, plucking a few _crase bessies_ by the way and munching them as she walked. There was hardly anyone about the town, except a few _boys_ carrying pails of water from the fountain. When she reached home, she found that the house was still shut and locked, with all the blinds down. So she sat on the kitchen step and waited until old Sara, coming out to get wood for the fire, nearly fell over her.

"Tch! Tch! Tch!" she clucked. "_Arme kentze! War vas sig gisterand?_"

(Poor child! Where were you last night?)

"_Dar bij de dam. Ge koffi O'Sara. Ik is freeslik kow._" (Up by the Big Dam. Give me some coffee, Sara. I am very cold.)

"Jah! Jah!" said old Sara, and hurried away, clucking and muttering, to make the fire and get the morning coffee. Poppy went in and warmed herself, and presently got down the cups and beakers and stood them in a row on the kitchen table. Cups and saucers for aunt and uncle and Clara and Emily, and beakers for the children. Old Sara poured them full of steaming black coffee, added milk and sugar and a home-made rusk in each saucer, and carried them away to the bedrooms. Poppy sat down with a beaker full, dipping a rusk into the coffee and eating it sopped, because the rusks are too hard to eat any other way. Presently old Sara came and squatted on her haunches by the fire too, drinking her coffee from a white basin with a blue band round it (blue that it gave Poppy a pain to look at, it was so cold and livid), and making fearful squelching noises, she sopped and ate. Rolling her big black and white eyes at Poppy, she whispered all that had happened after she had gone.

Aunt Lena had screamed and cried for hours, raving that she would not have her child's murderess in the house again. She could go and live in the fowls' _hok_, or the forage-house, until another home was found for her, but if Poppy came into her sight again, she would tear her limb from limb. Afterwards she had coughed and spat up blood. Old Sara wagged her head, giving this piece of information as one who should say: "Serve her right, too." The doctor had come and said that "something was broken inside." Old Sara patted her wobbly stomach. "She must go to bed and not move for a month or she would go too." Old Sara pointed sanctimoniously upwards.

It was even so. Aunt Lena lay for weeks on her bed, but still ruling her house from it. Poppy was not allowed to eat or sleep under the house roof. A blanket was given to her, and she slept on the bales of chaff in the out-house with a bundle of forage for a pillow. Old Sara brought to her there such meals as she was allowed to receive.

The twins were not allowed to speak to her: a strange girl was hired to take them out--Poppy did not mind that. Clara and Emily pa.s.sed her in the yard as though she was a jackal or some unclean beast--she minded that even less. The only thing she minded at all, was not being allowed to see Ina before she was buried.

On the day of the funeral, the little cold form in the coffin was not more cold and numb than one lying out in the out-house between two bales of chaff. Despair of mourning had Poppy by the throat. She could have wailed like a banshee. Indeed, if her voice had not gone from her, it is probable that she would have relieved the pressure on her heart and brain in this fashion. As it was, she was the only person in the place who gave no outward sign of mourning. Her old blue galatea overall, with the pattern worn faint in front, and the sleeves in rags, might have grown to her back. But old Sara was given a dark dress of Aunt Lena's, and a new black _dook_ to wear on her head. Clara and Emily had new black alpaca dresses, with tucks round the bottom and black ribbon sashes. Eight little girls came dressed in white, with their hair down and long floating white muslin veils hanging behind, and bunches of white flowers in their hands. They were to carry the coffin in turns, four carrying and four walking behind, because it was a very long way to the graveyard. Mr. Kennedy and Georgie and Bobby walked behind them, and then a great many men. But the saddest mourner of all watched from the crack of the forage-house door, and thought how sad and beautiful it all was, and how it would have been spoilt if she had gone out and joined it in her blue overall; and after the procession was out of sight, lay there on her face on the chaff, and could not cry; and seemed to have swallowed a stone, that stuck in her throat and gave her dreadful pains all across her chest; and whose heart kept saying: "I hate G.o.d! I hate aunt!" And when she tried to scream it aloud, found that she had no voice.

In the evening when the sun was set, but before it was dark, a figure stole out of the back yard, crept through the empty _spruit_, slipped through a private garden and came out by the cathedral steps; then up past the big church bell that tolled for the dead, and so to the graveyard.

All the way she gathered wild flowers and gra.s.ses--rock-maiden-hair, _rooi gras_, moon-flowers, and most especially shivery-gra.s.s, and the little perky rushes with a flower sprouting out of them, which the children call _tulps_. Ina had always loved these. Some "four o'clocks"

too, stolen from a front garden as she pa.s.sed, were added, and even a _stink bloem_ graced the great bunch with which Poppy entered the churchyard.

She found a new little heap of red earth that she knew must be Ina's grave, for it was all covered with wreaths and the bunches of flowers the eight girls had carried. Sc.r.a.ping them all to the foot of the grave, Poppy laid hers where she thought Ina's hands would be, whispering down through the earth:

"From Poppy, Ina--Poppy who loves you best of all."

Some nights old Sara would come sneaking softly over to the forage-house, to sit a while with Poppy; sometimes she had a rusk to give the prisoner; most often she had nothing but an end of candle, but that was very welcome. Lighting it, and sticking it on a side beam, she would squat on the floor, and taking off her _dook_, proceed to comb her wool. Poppy was glad of company, and interested in the frank way old Sara attended to the business of catching and killing her _chochermanners_; besides, there were a lot of interesting things in old Sara's wool besides _chochermanners_: there was a little bone box full of snuff, and a little bone spoon to put it in the nose with; and a piece of paper with all old Sara's money in it; and a tooth belonging to old Sara's mother, and several small home-made bone combs and pins and charms.

Old Sara's Dutch was poor, and Poppy could not speak Basuto, so that much conversation did not ensue, but black people can tell a great deal without saying much.

Once Poppy asked her why she did not go to her _kraal_ and live with her children instead of working for white people.

Old Sara took snuff and answered briefly:

"_Ek het ne kinders, oor Ek is ne getroud._" (I have no children, because I am not married.)

This was good, but not infallible logic, as Poppy even in her few years had discovered.

"Why didn't you get married when you were young, old Sara?" she queried.

Old Sara rolled her eyes mournfully at the child, and muttered some words in her own language. Then slowly she undid the b.u.t.tons of many kinds and colours which adorned the front of her dress. From the left bosom she took a large bundle of rags, and placed them carefully on the floor, then opening her bodice wide, she revealed her black body bare to the waist. Poppy's astonished gaze fell upon a right breast--no object of beauty, but large and heavy; but where the left breast should be was only a little shrivel of brown skin high up out of line with the other.

That was old Sara's only answer to Poppy's question. Afterwards she quietly replaced her bundle of rags, and reb.u.t.toned her dress.

As for Poppy, she pondered the problem long. At last she made a little song, which she called:

"The woman with the crooked breast."

One night old Sara brought news.

Poppy's box was being packed. In two days she was going to be sent away in the post-cart. Poppy thrilled with joy, and had no foreboding until next day when she overheard Clara and Emily whispering together in the yard. It transpired that though they envied Poppy the journey to Boshof in the post-cart, they did not envy her subsequent career under the protection of their mother's sister, Aunt Clara Smit.

"Do you remember that time ma sent us there when Ina had the diphtheria?

We never got anything but bread and dripping, and she was eating chops and steaks all the time."

"Yes," said Clara, "and remember how she used to beat _Katzi_, the little Hottentot girl, in bed every night for a week until the blood came, just because she broke a cup."

"Ha! ha!" they chirruped, "won't Miss Poppy get it _just_!"

"Yes, and mammer's going to give her something before she goes, too. She sent me to buy a _sjambok_ this morning, because pa's hidden his away, and when he's gone out to the 'Phoenix' to-night, she's going to have Poppy across the bed in front of her. You're to hold her head and me her feet."

"Tlk! Won't she get it!"

This interesting piece of news determined Poppy on a matter which had long been simmering in her mind. She decided at last that she would take no more beatings from Aunt Lena, and neither would she sample the quality of Aunt Clara Smit's charity. She would run away.

All that afternoon she lay turning the matter over, and later she took old Sara into her confidence for two reasons: old Sara must commandeer some food for her, and must also get for her the only thing she wanted to take away with her--a round green stone brooch which had belonged to her mother, and which Aunt Lena kept in her top drawer.

Poppy felt sure that with her mother's brooch on her she need fear nothing in the world; it was green, and therefore kindly disposed, as all green things were, being akin to trees.

It took a long while to beguile old Sara to obtain the brooch, for the old woman was very honest and she thought this looked too much like a stealing matter. Eventually she was persuaded, and a little after seven o'clock she brought it stealthily to the forage-house, together with a pocketful of food-sc.r.a.ps saved from her own portion of the evening meal.

After this, Poppy did not dare wait another instant. She knew that as soon as he had finished his supper, her uncle would light his pipe and stroll off to spend a cheerful evening in the billiard-room of the "Phoenix Hotel"; then they would come to fetch her indoors!

With a hasty farewell to old Sara, her only friend, she slipped out through the dark yard and ran swiftly up the street. Her direction was towards the _Uitspan_, a big bare place about half a mile from the town where wagons halted for a night before starting on a journey, or before bringing their loads into town in the morning. There was a big _Uitspan_ out beyond St. Michael's, and she made for that one, remembering there were always plenty of wagons there.

When she stole near it in the darkness, she counted eight wagons, four of which were loaded to depart, since their dissel-booms were turned away from the town.

There were several fires burning, and the fume of coffee was on the night air. Someone was making _as-kookies_ (ash-cakes) too, for a pleasant smell of burnt dough a.s.sailed Poppy's nose. Four Kaffir _boys_ were sitting round a three-legged pot, dipping into it and jabbering together, and by the light of another fire a white woman and three children were taking their evening meal. The wagon behind them was loaded with furniture and boxes, and by this Poppy was sure that they were a family on the move. She crept nearer to them, keeping in the shadow of the close-growing bushes. The dull red fires and the stars gave the only light there was.

"Ma," said one of the children at the fire, "I see a spook over there by the bushes." The mother's response was: "Here, you make haste and finish your coffee and get into the wagon. It's time you children were asleep.

They're going to inspan at eleven and you'd better get a good sleep before the wagon starts creaking and jolting."

This was useful information to Poppy. Her plan was to follow the wagon when it started and keep near it until late the next day, when too far from Bloemfontein to be sent back.

She crouched lower among the bushes, and presently began to munch some of her oddments of food, while still she watched the family she meant to adopt. When they had finished their meal they first washed up their tin beakers and plates with water from a small _fykie_ which hung under the wagon; then everything was carefully put away into a wooden locker, and they prepared to retire for the night. The mother was a round-faced, good-natured-looking, half-Dutch colonial, evidently. She climbed st.u.r.dily into the tented wagon by the help of the brake and a little _reimpe_ ladder. Across the tent was swung a _cartel_ (thong mattress) and atop of this was a big comfortable mattress with pillows and blankets arranged ready for use. By the light of the lantern which the woman fixed to the roof of the tent, Poppy could see that the sides of the tent were lined with calico bags with b.u.t.toned-over flaps, all bulging with the things that would be needed on the journey. The woman proceeded to store away more things from a heap in the middle of the bed, some she put under the pillows, some under the mattress, and many were tied to the wooden ribs of the tent so that it presently resembled a Christmas-tree. Meantime the children cl.u.s.tered on the brake and the _reimpe_ ladder, fidgeting to climb into the snug-looking nest. The mother talked while she worked:

"Here, Alice! I'll put this pair of old boots into the end bag, they'll do for wearing in the veldt----"

"Oh, sis, ma! I hate those old boots, they hurt me--" expostulated Alice.

"Nonsense, how can they hurt you? You keep your new ones for Pretoria, anything'll do on the veldt. Now you all see where I'm putting the comb--and this beaker we'll keep up in your corner, Minnie, so we don't have to go to the locker every time we're thirsty. I hope that boy will hang the _fykie_ where we can reach it. Begin to take your boots off, Johnny. I'm not going to have you in here treading on my quilt with those boots; no one is to get in until they're _carl-foot_."

"I'll get _deviljies_ (thorns) in my feet if I take them off out here,"

says Johnny. "Can't I sit on the edge of the bed?"

"All right then, but keep your feet out. Minnie, take off that good ribbon and tie your hair with this piece of tape," etc.