Poppy Part 6

Unfortunately, after leaving the wagons and hiding herself in a deep gulch, Poppy had fallen asleep, and that so heavily after her many nights of sleepless worry, that she did not awake for more than fourteen hours. When she did wake she found that some poisonous insect or reptile had stung one of her feet terribly: it was not painful, but enormously swollen and discoloured, and she found it difficult to get along. The wagons had gone and she could never catch up with them again, even if she wished. On the second night she heard, many miles away, the cracking of the whips and saw little glow-worms of light that might have been the flare of fires lighted to show her the way back to the wagons; and her spirit yearned to be with those friendly faces and kindly fires. She wept and shivered and crouched fearsomely in the darkness.

The next day it rained: merciless, savage, hammering rain. Sometimes she wandered in it, fancying herself wandering in a forest of trees, all with stems as thick as a rain-drop; sometimes it was so strong she could lean against it; sometimes she thought she was a moth beating against gla.s.s, trying, trying to get out.

Another night came.

Through most of that she lay p.r.o.ne on her face, thinking--believing--hoping that she was dead and part of the earth she lay on.

And, indeed, the greater part of her was mud.

She had long ago lost the road. She supposed she must be in the Transvaal somewhere; but at this time, half-delirious from pain, hunger, and terror, she believed herself back near Bloemfontein--seemed to recognise the hills outside the town. Terrified, she took another direction, falling sometimes and unable to rise again until she had slept where she lay. Whenever she saw bushes with berries or fruits on them she gathered and ate.

Sometimes from her hiding-places she could see Kaffirs pa.s.s singly, or in small parties; but after searching their faces, she let them pa.s.s.

Even in her delirium something warned her not to make herself known.

One night, it seemed to her weeks after she had left the wagons, she was suddenly dazzled by the sight of a red light shining quite near her. She gathered up her last remnants of strength and walked towards it; she believed she urged and ran--in reality she merely drifted by the help of a friendly wind that happened to be blowing that way. At last she saw that it was not one--but many lamps and candles shining through the windows of a house. But the windows themselves could be only dimly seen through the leaves of a tree, which overhung the house and threw long claw-like shadows everywhere. Next, her broken feet knew gravel under them: white walls were before her, too--and green doors and green window-shutters, all laced and latticed with the shadows of one great tree that stood like a monster in the path by the big door. The lights that shone out and dazzled showed her that the tree was very, very green, with a myriad strange scarlet eyes glowing in it; eyes that glowed with an alert brightness that was not friendly. Poppy had always loved trees and believed them to be her friends, but this tree frightened her. Nevertheless she crept closer to the biggest, brightest window of the house, and peered in through the gla.s.s panes, a little dulled and dimmed by the ever-beating, everlasting rain. She saw a man sitting at a table spread with beautiful shining vases of flowers, dishes of food, plates and gla.s.ses that glittered, fruit--two black _boys_ waited on him, dressed in white uniforms, and through an open doorway a tan-skinned old woman with a white _dook_ could be seen speaking to one of the _boys_--handing him a dish that flamed with little blue flames. The man at the table leaned back in his chair and faced the window. If it had not been that she believed herself dying, or perhaps already dead, Poppy would rather have gone back to the veldt than into the house where that face was master, for it terrified her even as the faces of the Kaffirs on the veldt had done. The man was not ugly; but his mouth was cruel and bitter, and his eyes were of the same hard, cold blue as the stripe on old Sara's coffee-basin. And across his face, from the left eye to the corner of his mouth, was a long, raw, newly-healed scar.

It seemed to Poppy that while she stood watching this man, something inside her shrivelled up and blew away from her like a leaf in the wind.

It came into her head then that, after all, she would not stay here at this house; it would be better to go back to the veldt. Wearifully she stepped down from the high steps she had climbed, reached the green door, and then her hobbling feet would go no further.

She sank on the steps and her head knocked against the door. At once dogs barked inside, voices came near, the door opened, letting strong light fall across the face of Poppy, now lying on the floor. She saw black faces around her and heard native voices crying, "Wha!" in astonishment. Then someone lifted her up very strongly and held her under a hanging lamp and looked at her. She saw through failing eyes that it was the man with the scar.

"Who are you, child?" he asked, and his voice was quite kind and friendly.

Again the feeling of terror and panic swept over the child's heart; but she was very tired. She believed she was already dead. Her head fell back.

"My soul is like a shrivelled leaf," is what she answered.

PART II

"I never saw anything like the way a poppy lives with its heart and soul every second of the day.

"It is the most joyful flower in the world. Not a joy of strength, for it is fragile, but just sheer delight in existence and devil-may-care.

I would much rather have poppies on my coffin than stupid affected lilies and white roses.

"Then the sheer cheek of a poppy, and the way it dies quickly, without any bother, when picked! It is such a definite vivid thing, whether it is braving the sun, or sleeping folded under the stars. A wild, fresh individuality; not a ba.n.a.l neutral-tinted affair out of the garden, or something with a smile on its face and a claw underneath, like a rose."

(_Extract from a letter._)

CHAPTER I

The girl, with a little curling motion, leaned back in the rickshaw and gazed with fascinated eyes at the moving picture before her, seen through the hazy heat of a summer day.

Above the wide main street of Durban the sun blazed and glared like a brazen image of itself in the high ardent blue. Men in loose white ducks and flannels sauntered along, or stood smoking and talking under the shop awnings.

Carriages and rickshaws flew past, containing women in light gowns and big veils, with white and sometimes scarlet sunshades. Black boys at the street corners held out long-stalked roses and sprays of fragrant mimosa to the pa.s.sers-by, beguiling them to buy. Coolies with baskets of fish on their heads and bunches of bananas across their shoulders, shambled along, white-clad and thin-legged. One, with a basket of freshly-caught fish on his arm, cried in a nasal sing-song voice:

"Nice lovely shad! Nice lovely shad!"

Two water-carts, clanking along in opposite directions, left a dark track behind them on the dusty road, sending up a heavy odour of wet earth which the girl snuffed up as though she had some transportingly sweet perfume at her delicate nostrils.

"I'm sure there is no smell in the world like the smell of wet Africa,"

she cried softly to herself, laughing a little. Her eyes took on a misty look that made them like lilac with the dew on it.

Her black hair, which branched out on either side of her forehead, had a trick of spraying little veils of itself over her eyes and almost touching her cheek-bones, which were pitched high in her face, giving it an extraordinarily subtle look.

She was amazingly attractive in a glowing ardent fashion that paled the other women in the street and made men step to the edge of the pavement to stare at her.

She looked at them, too, through the spraying veils of her hair, but her face remained perfectly composed under the swathes of white chiffon which she wore flung back over her wide hat, brought down at the sides and twisted round her throat, with two long flying ends.

The big Zulu boy between the shafts, running noiselessly except for the pat of his bare feet and the "Tch-k, tch-k, tch-k" of the seed bangles round his ankles, became conscious that his fare was creating interest.

He began to put on airs, giving little shouts of glorification, taking leaps in the air and tilting the shafts of the rickshaw backwards to the discomfort of its occupant.

She leaned forward, and in a low voice spoke a few edged words in Zulu that made him change his manners and give a glance of astonishment behind him, crying:

"_Aa-h! Yeh--boo Inkosizaan!_" behaving himself thereafter with decorum, for it was a disconcerting thing that an _Inkosizaan_ who had come straight off the mail-steamer at the Point should speak words of reproof to him in his own language.

Presently he came to the foot of the Berea Hill, which is long and sloping, causing him to slacken pace and draw deep breaths.

A tram-car dashed past them going down-hill, while another climbed laboriously up, both open to the breeze and full of people. The road began to be edged with fenced and hedged-in gardens, the houses standing afar and almost hidden by shrubs and greenery.

The girl spoke to the rickshaw-puller once more.

"The _Inkos_ at the Point told you where to go. Do you know the house?"

He answered yes, but that it was still afar off--right at the top of the Berea.

She leaned back again content. It delighted her to be alone like this.

It was quite an adventure, and an unexpected one. A malicious, mischievous smile flashed across her face as she sat thinking of the annoyance of the _Inkos_ left behind at the docks. He had been furious when he found no closed carriage waiting for them.

There was one on the quay, but it was not theirs, and on approaching it and finding out his mistake, he stood stammering with anger. But she had flashed into a waiting rickshaw, knowing very well that he could not force her to get out and go back to the ship without making a scene.

Nothing would induce him to make a scene and attract the attention of people to himself. He had indeed told her in a low voice to get out and come back with him to wait for a carriage, but she merely made a mouth and looked appealingly at him, saying:

"Oh Luce! It will be so lovely in a rickshaw. I have never ridden in one like this yet."

"Well, ride to the devil," he had amiably responded, and turned his back on her. She had called out after him, in an entrancingly sweet voice:

"Yes, I know, Luce; but what is the address?"

"It was a shame," she said to herself now, still smiling; "but really I don't often vex him!"