Part 3 (1/2)

After that she never found life quite unlovely again. But she longed to hear more, and whenever she could, even at the risk of curses and blows, she would steal to kind Mrs. Dale for another word. How ardently she wished her mother had lived. How unutterably beautiful to be called Poppy-flower! instead of _Porpie_! Her mother would have understood, too, the love and craving for books which had seized her since she had more learning. She would not have been obliged to creep into the fowls'

_hok_ or the forage-house when she wanted to read some book she had borrowed or found lying about the house, or the old Tennyson which she had rescued from the ash-heap one day and kept hidden under the chaff-bags in the forage-house.

”There's that Porpie with a book again!” was her aunt's outraged cry.

”Lazy young huzzy! For ever squatting with her nose poked into a book reading some wickedness or foolishness I'll be bound.... Anything rather than be helpful ... no wonder your face is yellow and green, miss ...

sitting with your back crooked up instead of running about or doing some housework ... more to your credit if you got a duster and polished the dining-room table or mended that hole in the leg of your stocking.” Oh, the thousands of uninteresting things there are to be done in the world!

thought Poppy. The dusters and d.a.m.nations of life!

She used to long to be taken ill so that she might have a rest in bed and be able at last to read as much as she liked. But when she broke her arm she was too ill to care even about reading, and when she got scarlet fever she could not really enjoy herself, for Ina sickened of it too, and was put into bed with her, and was so fretful, always crying unless she was told stories or sung to. So they got better together and _that_ was over.

Before she was twelve Poppy's schooldays came to an end. The five sovereigns had been spent and there was no more to come. Wasted money, Mrs. Kennedy said, and wrote and told the G.o.d-mother so. The fact that never a single prize had been won was d.a.m.ning evidence that the culprit was both idle and a dunce. It was quite true that she had learnt nothing much in the way of lessons. History and geography or anything with a story in it, or poetry, were the only things that interested her.

Grammar and arithmetic were nothing but stumbling-blocks in her path, though she never spoke bad grammar, being quick to detect the difference in the language of her teachers and that of her aunt, and profiting by it, and she learned to use her voice as they did too--softly and low--never speaking the half-Dutch, half-English patter used by Mrs.

Kennedy and her children to the accompaniment of ”Och, what?” ”Hey?” and ”Sis!” Her Uncle Bob had a sweet way of turning his words in his lips, which made even the kitchen-Dutch pleasant to the ear, and with great delight Poppy discovered one day that she also had this trick. Not for years however, did she realise that this was Ireland in her tongue; her country's way of marking Bob Kennedy and Poppy Destin as her own, in spite of Africa.

Her ear was fine for beautiful sounds and her aunt's voice sc.r.a.ped the inside of her head more and more as time went on, and whenever the latter dropped an ”h” Poppy picked it up and stored it in that dark inner cupboard of hers where was kept all scorn and contempt.

She never made a remark herself without _thinking_ it first and deciding how it was going to sound, so afraid was she of getting to speak like her aunt. Often she used to practise talking, or recite to herself when she thought no one was listening, but when overheard, fresh sneers were thrown at her.

”Was she going daft then? ... speaking to herself like a crazy Hottentot ... concocting impudence, no doubt ... the lunatic asylum was _her_ place ... and don't let me hear you again, my lady, or I'll up with my hand ... etc.”

One day Ina fell very ill, and Mrs. Kennedy sent a messenger flying for the doctor. When he came he shook his head gravely, and after a week or two announced that the child had dropsy. It sometimes followed on scarlet fever, he said ... especially if the child had taken cold ...

probably she had been sitting on the damp ground. At once Mrs. Kennedy's imagination conjured up a picture of Ina sitting on a damp stone on the Kopje while Poppy amused herself reading a book. That was quite enough to convince her as to who was the cause of the child's illness.

Thereafter she never ceased to reproach Poppy with this new crime.

”If it hadn't been for _your_ wicked carelessness, my child wouldn't be lying at death's door now,” was her eternal cry, followed by a long list of all the sins and offences committed by Poppy since first the affliction of her presence had fallen upon the Kennedys' home.

”A thorn in my side, that's what you've been ever since I first set eyes on your yellow face.... I don't know what G.o.d lets such beasts as you go on living for ... no good to anyone ... dirty, deceitful little s.l.u.t ...

nose always in a book ... muttering to yourself like an Irish Fenian ...

ill-treating my children.... Your mother ought to have been alive, that's what ... _she_ would have learned you ... etc.”

A fresh offence was that little Ina would have no one else with her but the despised and evil one. The cry on her lips was always, ”Poppy, Poppy--come, Poppy!”

She lay in her cot, white and swollen, and marbly-looking, and at first the doctor steamed her incessantly; a wire cage covered with blankets over her body, a big kettle, with its long spout stuck into the cage, boiling at the foot of the bed. She would moan and fret at the heat and Poppy had to be singing to her always; even fairy tales she would have sung to her. One day the doctor cut three slits in the instep of each poor little foot while she lay in Poppy's arms, clinging and wailing, and Poppy, quivering and sick, watched the sharp little knife and the water spouting out almost up to the ceiling--no blood came. After that, all Ina's marbly look was gone, and it was plain to see that she was nothing but a little white skeleton; and so weak she could hardly whisper to Poppy to sing to her--”There's a Friend for little children,”

and ”Snow-white and Rose-red”--her favourite hymn and her favourite fairy-tale.

It had never occurred to Poppy that the child would die; but one day the doctor stood a long time watching her as she lay staring straight at the ceiling with her pretty brown eyes all glazy, and her little ghost hands clutching the bars of her cot, and presently he shrugged his shoulders in a hopeless way and turned to Mrs. Kennedy.

”I thought we might save her as she was so young, but----”

Then he went away and did not come so often after. And day by day Ina grew thinner and whiter, and her eyes got bigger and shone more, and she never made a sound except to whisper, ”Poppy--sing, Poppy.”

Poppy's voice had gone to a whisper too, then, and she could only make strange sounds in her throat; but Ina did not notice that.