Poppy.

by Cynthia Stockley.

PART I

"... and some do say of poppies that they be the tears of the moon shed in a land beyond the seas: and that they do bring forgetfulness and freedom from pain."

(_From an old Irish Legend_.)

POPPY

Nothing more unlike a gladsome poppy of the field was ever seen than Poppy Destin, aged nine, washing a pile of dirty plates at the kitchen table.

Pale as a witch, the only red about her was where she dug her teeth into her lips. Her light lilac-coloured eyes were fierce with anger and disgust. Her hair hung in long black streaks over her shoulders, and her dark hands, thin and bony as bird's claws, were each decorated with a bracelet of greeny-yellowy grease.

There had been curry for dinner. Horrible yellow rings floated on the top of the water in the _skottel_ and Poppy hated to put her hands into it.

She was hating her work more than usual that day because she was hungry as well as angry. She had slapped her little cousin Georgie for throwing a heavy hammer at her which had cut a gash in her leg; and her punishment for this crime had been two stinging boxes on the ear and sentence to go without food all day. Fortunately the incident had occurred after breakfast.

Once or twice she looked longingly at the sc.r.a.ps on the plates, but she did not touch them, because her aunt had eaten from one and she was not sure which, and she knew that to eat from anything her aunt had touched would choke her.

So she threw the sc.r.a.ps to Nick the black cat, under the kitchen table, and went on hating her aunt, and washing up the plates. She would have liked to smash each plate on the floor as she took it out of the water, and to have thrown all the greasy water over the freshly-scrubbed white shelves and dresser. And she would have done it too, only that she did not like boxes on the ear.

Presently she tried to fill her bitter little heart and her empty little stomach by going on with the story inside her head. She always had a story going on inside her head, and it was always about just two people--a beautiful lady and a man with a face like Lancelot. She used to begin at the end to make sure they should be quite happy, and when she had married them and they were living happily "ever after," she would go back to the beginning--how they met and all the sad things they had to go through before they could be married. Afterwards she would make a little song about them.

That day she had a heroine with red gold hair for the first time, because she had seen such a beautiful red-gold-haired lady in the street the day before, dressed in brown holland with a brown hat trimmed with pale green leaves. Poppy dressed her heroine in the same fashion, instead of the usual white velvet with a long train and a wreath of white roses resting on her hair. Just as Lancelot was telling the heroine that her eyes were as beautiful as brown wine, a harsh voice called out from the dining-room:

"Porpie! Haven't you done that washing-up yet? Make haste there! You know you got to smear the kitchen before you clean yourself and take the children up to the Kopje."

Poppy gritted her teeth and furious tears came into her eyes; her aunt's voice always seemed to sc.r.a.pe something inside her head and make it ache; also, she detested taking the children up to the Kopje. It was such a long way to carry Bobby--all up Fountain Street in the broiling sun--and she _had_ to carry him, because if she put him into the pram with his twin, Tommy, they kicked each other and screamed, and when the children screamed, Aunt Lena always got to hear of it and boxed Poppy's ears for ill-treating them.

Listlessly she dried the plates and stuck them up in lines on the dresser, soaked the _fadook_ and washed all round the edges of the bowl, making the water swirl round and round so that the grease would not settle again, then, while the water moved swiftly, carried the basin to the back door and emptied it with a great "swash" into the yard. The fowls flew shrieking in every direction and the water ran down in little rivers to where old Sara was doing some washing under the shade of the biggest acacia tree. When the little stream reached her bare black feet she clicked her teeth, crying, "Aah," and moved round to the other side of the stones on which she banged the clothes to make them white.

Poppy dried her basin out with the _fadook_, wiped the table dry, and put the bowl upside down upon it. Then she went into the yard again and approached an old pail which stood in the forage-house. It was full of an atrocious mess, slimy and thick, giving out a pungent odour that made her nose wrinkle in disgust. Nevertheless she took it up and carried it down to old Sara to get some soapy water. The old Basuto in her red _kop-dook_, rolled the whites of her eyes sympathetically and muttered in her native tongue as she watched Poppy stir the green slime with a stick. She was sorry for the child. She knew it was Kaffir's work to smear floors. Black hands are hard, and the little thorns and stones to be found in the wet cow-dung do not hurt them; neither does the pungent smell disgust black noses.

"But the _old missis_ had strange ways! Clk! It seemed she liked the _klein-missis_ to do Kaffir's work!" Old Sara shrugged her fat, wobbly shoulders, and flopped over her wash-tub once more.

Poppy went back to the kitchen. She had swept it just before dinner, now she sprinkled it heavily with water, then kneeling down on a folded sack beside the bucket, she rolled up her sleeves, closed her eyes, and plunged her hands into the sickening mess. Quickly she withdrew them, flinging two handfuls on to the floor and began to smear it with the flat of her right hand.

Kitchens and verandahs (or stoeps) in old-fashioned South African houses always have what are called "mud floors," which means that they are just mother-earth with all the stones picked out and the surface kept smooth and level by constant smearing in or pasting on of wet cow-dung once or twice a week. Smearing is a disgusting business, but joy comes after.

When freshly dry the floor looks cool and green and fresh, and no longer does the _mis_ smell vilely; rather, there is a soft odour of gra.s.ses and flowers, as though some stray veldt wind had blown through the room.

But Poppy had no time to enjoy the result of her labour. After she had spread sacks upon the floor to prevent feet from marking her work until it was dry, she stopped for a moment to dig out a thorn from her thumb with a needle, but immediately her aunt's menacing voice could be heard from the front stoep, where now she sat drinking her after-dinner cup of coffee with her husband, admonishing the slowness of Poppy's proceedings, and demanding that she should "makaste."

Poppy ran into the bedroom which she shared with her two elder cousins, and cleaned herself of all traces of her recent occupation. Later she appeared on the front stoep, in a print pinafore over her grey linsey dress, and an old straw hat much bitten at the edges shading her pale fierce little face.

"My word, that child looks more like an Irish Fenian every day!" was her aunt's agreeable greeting.

Weak, good-looking "Uncle Bob," who was really no more than a second cousin of Poppy's, laughed in a deprecating kind of way. He was cutting a twist of tobacco from a great roll that hung drying from the stoep roof.

"Och, you're always going on at the girl, Lena!"

"And good cause I have," retorted Mrs. Kennedy. "Stand still, Ina, while I tie your cappie."

Poppy said nothing, but if having black murder in your heart makes you a Fenian, she knew that she was one.

Silently she a.s.sisted her aunt to put their pinafores upon the struggling twins, and to array Ina in her cape and bib--all starched to stand about them like boards, to their everlasting misery and discomfort. Mrs. Kennedy gloated upon the fact that all the neighbours said, "How beautifully kept Mrs. Kennedy's children are!"

At last Tommy was in the pram; Bobby pranced astride on Poppy's small bony hip, and Ina, who was just four, clung toddling to her skirt. Thus Poppy set forth, pushing the pram before her.

"And mind you bring them in before sun-down, and don't let them sit on the damp gra.s.s--" was Mrs. Kennedy's last word shouted up the street after the procession.

A little lane lined with syringa trees led from the house and was shady and sweet to loiter in, but Fountain Street glared and blazed under the afternoon sun. Poppy was pale and sadly-coloured as some strange cellar-plant when at last she brought her charges to a halt by the Kopje. She put Bobby down from her hip with a b.u.mp, tilted the pram and let Tommy scramble out the best way he could, then sat down on a rock and covered her face with her hands.

Bobby was a heavy-weight, and though she changed him from one hip to another all the way up the street, she never got to the Kopje without a pain in her stomach and a feeling of deathly sickness.

Nearly all the children of the town came to the Kopje in the afternoons.

It was only a slight hill, but it had bushes and clumps of mimosa trees, and little quarried-out holes and ma.s.ses of rocks, and other fascinating features dear to children. The Kaffir-girl nurses squatted under the trees jabbering amongst themselves, and the children congregated in small herds. Poppy was the only white-girl nurse to be seen. She had a little circle of trees and stones where she always took her brood, and if she found anyone else in possession, she threw stones at them until they retreated.

When she had spread a rug for them to sit on, the children were left to amuse themselves in whatsoever fashion seemed good unto them. Poppy sat dreaming to herself, wrapped in the veils of poetry and romance. Near the Kopje was St. Michael's, a high school for girls kept by an English sisterhood, and when Poppy and her brood reached their haunt before three o'clock, she would see all the girls coming out of the gates, pa.s.sing by in their nice dresses and hats with bags of books in their hands. They would stare at Poppy, and sometimes laugh; then the pain in her stomach would come into her throat and almost choke her. No one ever spoke to her. They knew quite well who she was, but she did Kaffir's work, and her clothes were old and ugly, and she was altogether a person to be despised and laughed at.

But sometimes a little ray of human friendliness would break through the hedge of sn.o.bbery. On this summer day a girl called Edie Wyllie, who used to sit next to her in Sunday-school, called out in quite a jolly way as she pa.s.sed:

"Hullo, Poppy Destin!"

But her sister pulled at her arm at once and rebuked her.

"Edie! You know mother doesn't let us speak to Poppy Destin."

"Pooh!" called out Poppy with the utmost scorn and derision. "Who wants to speak to you? I hate you."

She made fearful faces at them; but when they had all gone past, she rocked on her stone and wept.

"I hate them! I hate them!" she sobbed. "And I hate G.o.d! G.o.d is a beast."

Ina stood by and listened, with her pinafore in her mouth.

"I'll tell mother that, what you say," she remarked gravely.

"'Tell-tale-t.i.t, your tongue shall be slit.' Go away from me, else I'll beat you," shouted Poppy, and Ina ran for her life and hid behind some rocks. Poppy continued her weeping, dry-eyed now, but sobbing spasmodically.

Suddenly a voice behind her!