Poppy Part 9

"What is it like here in Durban, Kykie?... How long have you been here?"

Kykie became very important, waggling her shoulders and rolling her eyeb.a.l.l.s.

"More than six months getting this house ready for habitation ... men working in the garden day and night, for it was a wilderness and the poor old place all gone to pot, dearest me."

"It looks all right now; I should think Luce was pleased?"

"Never so much as a thank you extremingly."

"Oh well, you know his ways ... but I am sure he appreciates all you do.

He has often said to me while we were away that he wished you were with us."

Kykie looked well pleased at this, but having pa.s.sed the tea, she waved her hands deprecatingly.

"You're just b.u.t.tering me up to heaven, Poppy!"

"No, I'm not. And he will eat again now he has you to cook for him.

Abroad he used to eat frightfully little, but to-day I noticed he made an excellent lunch."

Smiles wreathed Kykie's wide and dropsical face, and every tooth in her head was revealed.

"Dearest me, now Poppy, really? Well! but then I don't suppose they know how to cook very well abroad in London, do they?"

"Not so well as you, of course," said Poppy smiling and munching toast.

Suddenly Kykie's face became dolorous.

"Did they look at his mark much, for heavenly goodness?" she inquired in a dismal whisper.

"Not so much. You know, Kykie, the world is full of all sorts of strange-looking people--especially France and Italy. In Naples, now, they didn't take the slightest notice of him."

"For goodness' sake there must be some sights there!"

"More tea. It is lovely to be home again and have you waiting on me."

"Ah! I expect you liked it best abroad in that London, now Poppy?"

"Never. I _thought_ I should, but I had forgotten that my roots were planted out here. As soon as I got out of sight of Africa they began to pull and hurt ... you've no idea of the feeling, Kykie ... it is terrible ... and it always came upon me worst in cities. I used to be sick with longing for a glimpse of the big open s.p.a.ces with nothing in view but land and sky ... for the smell of the veldt, _you_ know, when it is baking hot and the rain comes fizzling down on it; and the early morning wind, when it has blown across a thousand miles of sun-burnt gra.s.s and little stalky, stripy, veldt-flowers and stubby bushes, and smells of the big black patches on the hill-sides where the fires have been, and of the _dorn bloems_ on the banks of the rivers ... and the oozy, muddy, reeking, rushing rivers! Oh Kykie, when I thought of Africa, in some prim blue-and-gold continental hotel, I felt like a caged tiger-cat, raging at the bars of the cage!... In Paris and London I couldn't bear to go to the big open parks for fear the sickness would come upon me.... It was like being a wild a.s.s of the desert, knee-haltered in a walled-in garden."

Kykie might have been an amazingly-arrayed copper idol representing Africa, so benign and gratified was her smile.

"Tell me some more, Poppy. Where else did you think of Africa?"

"Well, Palermo nearly drove me wild. It has the same hot moist air as Natal, and the flowers have the same subtle scents. The big spotted mosquitoes bit like terriers and followed us as high as we could go; but I couldn't even hate _them_, Kykie, they were so like the wretches we have out here--there's been one biting my instep all the afternoon." She pulled up her foot, and began to rub the spot gently through her stocking.

"I think Norway was the worst of all. The men there have beards and the same calm eyes as the Boers, and the people are all simple and kind, just as they were on the farms in the Transvaal ... and sometimes on the top of a steep still hill I could close my eyes and pretend that I was on a wild mountain krantz and the hush of the waterfalls all round one was the hush of the tall veldt gra.s.ses waving in the wind.... But when I looked, and saw only the still green waters of the fjords and afar off a glacier thrust out between two hills like the claw of some great white monster ... oh Kykie, I could have torn the heart out of my breast and thrown it into the waters below."

"Heavenly me! And were there coloured people there too?"

"Not in Norway; but America is full of them, and I hate them for cheats and frauds ... for I was always listening and waiting to hear some Kaffir or Dutch word from their lips ... and they never spoke anything but mincing, drawling American, through their noses, like this, Kykie:

"'Oh say, would _you_ tell _me_ what time this _kyar_ is due to start?'

"Once I saw a boy in an elevated-railway car, who, though he was magnificently dressed in navy blue serge and wore a brimmer hat, looked so _exactly_ like Jim Basuto who ran away from the farm, that I said to him in Kaffir:

"'You had better make haste and come back to the farm, Jim, and mind the sheep!'

"He simply stared at me, and said to another _boy_, who might have been a Zulu chief except for his clothes:

"'Say, this one looks to me as if she is dippy. I think she is the new star at Hammerstein's that _ky-ant_ speak anything but French.'

"Luce was so furious, he used fearful language at the Kaffir, and made me leave the train at the next station, and wouldn't speak to me for a week."

Having finished her tea and eaten all the bread-and-b.u.t.ter and cakes, the girl lay back on her pillow and closed her eyes.

"For gracious' sake, and so you have seen the world!" said Kykie. "And now you have come back to the old quiet life?"

"Not at all, Kykie. I'm going to persuade Luce to go about here, and meet people, and let me do the same."

"He'll never do it," said Kykie vehemently. "I can see that he is worse than ever about his mark."

"But he knows a lot of people here. I don't see how he can keep them from coming to the house; and I heard the _boys_ saying that he had gone to the Club this afternoon. Surely that is a sign that he is not going to shut himself up again?"

"He may go to the Club, but he won't let anyone come here. He has given me strict orders that no one is to come in the front gates; they are to be locked and he will keep the key. Everything is to come by the back entrance and that, too, is to be locked."

Poppy's face clouded.

"Oh Kykie! I wouldn't mind if we were back in the old farm with the free veldt all round us; but to be shut up in a house and garden--(and with Luce's devils," she added to herself),--"even if it _is_ a lovely garden!"

Kykie's face expressed lugubrious sympathy, but she held out no hope.

"You'll have to amuse yourself like you did before, with your music, and your reading, and writing, and be a good child," she said.

"But I'm not a child any longer. Can't you see how I've grown up?"

"I can see that you won't have to go and find milk-cactus to rub on your b.r.e.a.s.t.s any more," said Kykie, eyeing her with the calm candour of the native.

Poppy coloured slightly, and made occasion to throw a corner of the quilt over her bare shoulders and arms.

"For the sake of grace you needn't mind me," remarked Kykie. "Haven't I watched you many a moonlight night stealing down to where it grew by the old _spruit_?"

The girl's colour deepened; she gave a wistful little side glance at the old woman.

"I _did_ so want to be beautiful. I would have dived to the bottom of the filthiest hole in that old _spruit_ a dozen times a day to make myself the tiniest atom less ugly than I was. Do you remember that deep part where the water was so clear and we could see hundreds of crabs pulling pieces of flesh off the leg of the dead horse?"

"Oh _sis_ yes! I wondered how you could go and look at the stinking thing day after day."

"I used to be pretending to myself that it was my aunt they were eating.