Poppy Part 7

A man and a woman pa.s.sed, as she sat smiling her subtle smile through her spraying hair, and looked at her with great curiosity.

Afterwards the man said excitedly:

"That girl takes the shine out of Mary----"

The woman, who looked well-bred with a casual distinguished manner, agreed with him, but did not tell him so. She said:

"Her eyes look as though they were painted in by Burne-Jones, and she is dressed like a Beardsley poster; but I think she is only a girl who is glad to be alive. Mary, however, is the most beautiful woman in Africa."

The girl heard the words "Burne-Jones eyes," and knew they were speaking of her.

At last she arrived at the gates of her destination. Big, green iron gates, that clanged behind her as she walked quickly forward down a winding path into a deep dim garden. There was no more to be seen but trees and tangles of flowering shrubs and bushes and stretches of green gra.s.s, and trees and trees and trees. Some of the trees were so tall and old that they must have been growing there when Vasco da Gama first found Natal; but there were mangoes and sweetly-smelling orange arbours, that could only have been planted a mere twenty or thirty years. The magnolia bushes were in bud, and clots of red and golden flowers were all aflare. Cacti, spreading wide p.r.i.c.kly arms, and tall furzy gra.s.ses.

Cool wet corners had grottos frondy with ferns; other corners were like small tropical jungles with enormous palms trailed and tangled over with heavy waxen-leaved creepers and strangely shaped flowers.

At last, deep in the heart of this wild, still garden, she found the house. A tall rose-walled house, its balconies and verandahs, too, all draped and veiled with clinging green. One lovely creeper that clothed the hall-porch was alive with flowers that were like scarlet stars.

She broke one of them off and stuck it in the bosom of her gown, where it glowed and burned all day.

Then she rang the bell.

After a minute, someone came bustling down the hall and the door opened, discovering a stout and elderly coloured woman in a tight dress of navy-blue sateen with large white spots. Upon her head she wore a snowy _dook_. At the sight of the girl she shrieked, and fell back into a carved oak chair that stood conveniently at hand.

"Poppy!" she cried; "and no carriage sent for Luce! What time did the steamer come, in the name of goodness me?"

"It's no use asking that question now, Kykie," said the girl grimly.

"The only thing to do is to send a carriage down at once."

Kykie departed with amazing alacrity, while the girl examined the hall, and opening the doors that gave off it, peeped into several rooms.

"Most of the old furniture from the farm!" she commented with a look of pleasure. Presently she came to a flight of three stairs, and directed by the sound of Kykie's voice, she stepped down them and found herself in a large white-washed kitchen lined with spotless deal tables and broad shelves. An enormous kitchen range, shining and gleaming with steel and bra.s.s, took up the whole of one side of the kitchen. Wide windows let in a flood of cheerful sunshine.

Kykie, having loaded three Zulu boys with imprecations and instructions and driven them forth, had sunk into a chair again, panting, with her hand pressed to her heart, and an expression of utter misery on her face.

"Don't be so excited, Kykie," said the girl. "You can't escape the wrath to come; what is the use of making yourself miserable about it beforehand?"

Kykie rolled her big eyes heavenwards; the whites of them were a golden yellow.

"His first day home!" she wailed. "They told me at the shipping office the steamer wouldn't be in before three. May their mothers----"

Poppy walked round the kitchen, looking at everything.

"You've got all the same nice old copper things you had at the farm, haven't you, Kykie? But it is a much bigger kitchen. Which table will you let me have to mix the salads on?"

Kykie's face became ornamented with scowls.

"My salads are as good as anyone's," she a.s.serted.

"Nonsense! you know Luce always likes mine best. Come upstairs now and show me my room."

"Me? With the lunch to get ready!" screamed Kykie, and jumping up she ran to the stove and began to rattle the pots.

"Well, I will find it myself," said Poppy, going towards the door, "and I think you're very unkind on my first day home."

But Kykie gave no heed. As a rule she was of a sociable turn of mind and under other circ.u.mstances would have hung about Poppy, showing her everything and bombarding her with questions; but now she was in the clutches of despair and dismay at the thought of her neglect of her adored master, Luce Abinger, and her very real fear of the storm that would surely break over her head when he arrived.

Kykie called herself a "coloured St. Helena lady," but by the fat gnarled shape of her, it is likely that she was more than half a Hottentot. Also the evidence of her hair was against her: it was crisp and woolly, instead of being lank and oily as a proper "St. Helena lady's" should be. However, she always kept it concealed beneath a spotless _dook_. Her real name, as she often informed Poppy in aggrieved accents, was Celia Frances Elizabeth of Teck Fortune; but Luce Abinger had brutally named her Kykie, and that was all she was ever called in his house. By way of retaliation it was her agreeable custom to address her master and Poppy Destin by their Christian names; but Luce Abinger only laughed, and Poppy didn't mind in the least. The old woman was quite ignorant and uneducated, but she had lived all her life as a servant amongst civilised people, and she spoke correct and fluent English, tacking many curious expressions of her own to the tails of her remarks with an air of intense refinement.

She was often crabbed of temper and cantankerous of tongue, but the heart within her wide and voluptuous bosom was big for Luce Abinger and all that pertained to him. She had served him during the whole of his twenty-five years of life in South Africa; and she was a very pearl of a cook.

Poppy found her room without any difficulty. On opening the first door on the first landing and looking in, she recognised her books, and the faded yellow silk counterpane with the border of red poppies worked by Kykie in past days. She took off her hat and surveyed the room with contentment. Her cushions were in her chairs; her books in their accustomed book-shelves; her long mirror with the slim gilt frame hung between two windows that gave upon the balcony; her writing-table stood opposite the mirror where she could look up and see herself as she wrote. Her brown print of _Monna Lisa_ was above her dressing-table, and her silver cross with the ivory Christ nailed to it hung over her head--

"To keep a maid from harm!"

There were no pictures on the pale gold walls: only three wonderful drawings of herself, done in grey and blue and scarlet chalk on sheets of rough-edged common brown paper and fastened up by drawing-pins. These were the work of Luce Abinger.

She observed that all the bowls and vases were filled with green leaves--no flowers. Kykie and the _boys_ knew that green leaves were dearer to her than flowers.

Presently she rose and went to the mirror on the wall. Her hair did not quite please her, so she took out two little gold side-combs and ran them through it, until it branched out characteristically once more. She performed this ceremony on an average of twenty times a day, and always with a look of the frankest pleasure at the sight of herself.

"How nice my hair is!" she thought, "and how glad I am that it branches out in that fascinating way that just suits my face! If it were any other kind of hair, sleek, or smooth, or curly, I should not look nearly so charming."

Later she stepped into the balcony. The sun still glared, but the place was full of dim coolness, for its roof was ma.s.sed with clematis and Virginia creeper, and heavy curtains of creeper hung from roof to rail; but long openings had been cut in the greenery to afford a view of the town and sea. Over the tops of the trees, far away below, beyond many white houses and gardens and a shining beach, was the Indian Ocean. It lay very still and splendid: a vast sheet of Sevres enamel with a trivial frill of white at its edges, like the lace froth at the bottom of a woman's ball-gown. When storms sweep the Natal coast, that still shining sea can boom and roar and flash like a thousand cannons bombarding the town; but on the day that Poppy Destin first looked at it from her balcony, it was as still and flat as a sea on a map.

Long, long thoughts were hers as she stood gazing there; and the best of them all was that she was back once more in the land where the roots of her heart were planted deep.

While she stood lost in her reveries, Luce Abinger pa.s.sed through the garden below, walking noiselessly across the green lawns. He saw her dreaming there, in her white gown with the scarlet flower flaming at her breast, and his tormented face became even less lovely. At that time his mood resembled the mood of Job when he desired to curse G.o.d and die.

Poppy, becoming hungry, went down to look for lunch. She found the master of the house already seated, beating and jangling his forks together, a habit of his when he was impatient. He never touched his knives. Poppy had come to the conclusion that, like James I, he had some reason to hate and fear naked blades.

"The g-gong has been sounded twice for you," he began agreeably. "Were you afraid the view wouldn't be there after lunch?"

"I beg your pardon, Luce. I didn't know you were in, and I never heard a sound of the gong. Kykie, you should beat it louder."

Kykie was at the sideboard decanting whiskey. She resembled a person who had recently taken part in a dynamitic explosion. Her _dook_ was pushed to the back of her head, her eyes stuck out, and perspiration beaded her nose and cheek-bones. Several of the b.u.t.tons of her tight dress had come undone.

"Heavenly me!" she retorted in shrill staccato, "you never hear anything you don't want to, Poppy." With that she banged the decanter down and floundered from the room.

"What can be the matter with Kykie!" said Poppy in a wondering voice.

What she was really wondering was, whether the fireworks had all been exhausted on Kykie's devoted head or whether there would be a detonation in her own direction shortly.

Babiyaan, a _boy_ who had been in Luce Abinger's service for ten years, waited upon them with deft, swift hands. Poppy gave an inquiring glance at him; but though he had also received a generous share of obloquy and vilification, his face was as serene and impa.s.sive as an Egyptian's.

Some delicious fish was served, grilled as only Kykie could grill, followed by cutlets and green peas, and a salad of sliced Avocado pears, delicately peppered, and with a ravishing dressing.

Luce Abinger always preferred Poppy to mix the salads. He said that she combined all the qualifications demanded by the old Spanish receipt for the maker of a good salad--a spendthrift for the oil, a miser for the vinegar, a counsellor for the salt, and a lunatic to stir all up. It appeared that she sometimes fell short in the matter of salt, but she a.s.sured him that he had a fine stock of that within himself to fall back on, and acids too, in case of a lack of vinegar.

Kykie's salad was very good, and Poppy told Babiyaan to tell her so.

Later, she also sent a message of praise concerning the _omelette au Kirsch_. Except for these remarks the meal was partaken of in silence.

Poppy, while she ate, observed and approved the old-rose walls, the few beautiful mellowy pictures upon them, the dark polished floor and the Persian praying-rugs spread sleekly down the room. She looked everywhere but at the face of Luce Abinger, for she knew that his devils were at him; and as the possessor of devils of her own, she both felt compa.s.sion and exhibited courtesy in the presence of other people's. She never looked at Luce Abinger's face at any time if she could help it, for the sight of unbeautiful things always gave her intense pain; and his face had the added terror and sadness of a thing that has once been beautiful. Its right side was still strong and fine in line; and it was easy to see that the mouth, before it was dragged out of drawing by the scar and embittered and distorted by its frightful sneer, must have been wonderfully alluring. The scar had left his eyes untouched, except for a slight pulling-down of the outer corner of the left one where the disfigurement began. They must have been strikingly beautiful blue eyes once, but now a sort of perpetual cold fury at the back of them gave them an odd and startling light. Apart from that, they were eyes which it was not good for women to search in. Poppy sometimes thought of them as dark and sinister pools from which it was best to retreat, for fear of drowning and strangling in strange waters.