Part 8 (1/2)
Presently Babiyaan brought in the little silver urn and placed it before Poppy, and she lighted the spirit-lamp under it and made the coffee as she was always used to do in the old white farm. Cigars and cigarettes were put before Abinger.
Abinger drank his coffee as he had eaten, in absolute silence. Then, getting up suddenly, he bit off a word of apology with the end of his cigar, and left the room, Babiyaan following him.
Poppy immediately helped herself to a cigarette, put her elbows on the table and began to smoke. Later, she took her coffee and sat in the verandah. It was shady and full of deep comfortable chairs. From thence she presently saw Abinger emerge from the front door and depart into the garden; the closing clang of the gate told her that he had gone out. The heat of the day was oppressive. She lay back, staring at the lacy green of the trees against the blue, and considering the horrible affair of Luce Abinger's devils.
”It is bad enough for me to have to live with them--what must it be for him!” was her thought. She had seen his torment coming upon him as they neared Africa. Day by day he had grown more saturnine and unsociable. At last he spoke to no one; only Poppy, as a privileged person had an occasional snarl thrown in her direction. It was plain to her that returning to Africa meant to him returning to purgatory; especially since he did not intend to go back to seclusion, but to take up his residence in this house in Durban, where he had often lived in past years. Poppy had gathered from Kykie that before he ”got his mark,” as she curiously expressed it, and went to live at the old white farm, Abinger had kept house in Johannesburg and Durban; had lived for a part of the year in each house, and was well known in both places. So that coming back would cause him all the torture of meeting old friends who had known him before his disfigurement. He would have to run the gauntlet of familiar eyes grown curious and questioning.
”Why should he have chosen to come back at all to the place of his torment?” Poppy wondered. ”It would surely have been simpler and easier to have settled in Italy or somewhere where he knew no one, and would not be noticed so much. It can only be that Africa has her talons in _his_ heart, too; she has clawed him back to her brown old bosom--he _had_ to come.”
As Poppy sat in the verandah thinking of these things, she heard the _boys_ in the room behind her clearing the luncheon-table, and talking to each other in their own language. Either they had forgotten her or they thought she could not hear.
”Where has _Shlalaimbona_ gone?” asked Umzibu; and Babiyaan answered without hesitation:
”He has gone to the _Ker-lub_ to make a meeting with _Intandugaza_ and _Umkoomata_.”
Few things are more amazing than your Kaffir servants' intimate knowledge of your affairs, except it be their absolute loyalty and secrecy in these matters outside your own walls. Abroad from home their eyes and ears and tongue know nothing. They are as stocks and stones.
They might be fishes for all the information they can give concerning you and yours.
Also, whether they love or hate or are indifferent to him they serve, they will infallibly supply him with a native name that will fit him like his own skin. Sometimes the name is a mere mentioning of a physical characteristic but usually it is a thing more subtle--some peculiarity of manner or expression, some idiosyncrasy of speech--a man's secret sin has been known to be blazoned forth in one terse Zulu word.
It must not be supposed, however, that South African natives are as deep in mysterious lore as the Chinese, or as subtle as Egyptians. The fact is merely, that like all uncivilised peoples they have a fine set of instincts; an intuition leads them to nearly the same conclusions about people as would a trained reasoning power. Only that the native conclusion has a corner of the alluring misty veil of romance thrown over it, while the trained reason might only supply a cold, hard, and perhaps uninteresting fact.
Instances are, where the meaning of a native nickname is too subtle for the nominee himself--though any Zulu who runs may read and understand.
If Luce Abinger had asked his servants why they called him _Shlalaimbona_, they would have shrugged shoulders and hung their heads, with a gentle, deprecating gesture. Being questioned, they would look blank; being told to get out and go to the devil, they would look modest. Afterwards they would exchange swift dark glances, and smiling, repeat among themselves with a gesture of stabbing: ”_Shlalaimbona!_”
Literally this word means--_stab when you see him_. What they meant by applying this name to Abinger, G.o.d and themselves knew best. Poppy had often pondered the reason, but she had never made any inquiries for fear it might have something to do with Abinger's scar. For another thing, Abinger desired her never to talk to the _boys_.
”Keep them at a distance: they will be all the better servants,” was his command; and in this, as in most things, Poppy found it wiser to obey him.
Babiyaan continued to give interesting information to Umzibu.
”Just as _Shlalaimbona_ was going to get into the carriage, _Umkoomata_ came to the docks and fell upon him with great friendliness. Afterwards they went to an hotel to drink. Then _Umkoomata_ made a plan for meeting at the _Ker-luk_ when _Intandugaza_ would be there and others--_Baas Brookifield_, he with the curled hair and the white teeth; and that other one, _Caperone_, whose wife is like a star with light around it; and _Port-tal_, who is always gay with an angry face.”
At this juncture Umzibu missed Poppy's coffee-cup, and coming into the verandah to seek it, the presence of Poppy was revealed to him. He immediately communicated the fact by sign to Babiyaan, and a silence fell. Thereafter no more confidences; Poppy was left to speculate upon the ident.i.ty of the person who wore so fascinating a t.i.tle as _Intandugaza_, which name she translated to herself as _Beloved of women_. The word _Umkoomata_, too, had a charm of its own.
”That means someone who is very reliable, literally _St.u.r.dy One_. I should like to know that man,” she thought.
At about this time it occurred to her that she was tired and would go to rest in her room a while. She had risen at five that morning to watch the African coast and revel in the thought that she would soon have her foot on her own land again. The excitement of the day had tired her more than she knew. When she looked in her gla.s.s to rake the little gold combs through her hair, she saw that she was pale. The only colour about her was her scarlet ardent mouth and the flower at her breast.
She flung off her gown and plunged her arms and face into cold water, then let down her hair with a rush and pulling her chair opposite her mirror, she sat down in company she had never so far found uninteresting--the company of her own reflection.
She did not put on a wrapper. For one thing the day was warm, for another she found great pleasure in seeing her bare pale arms and shoulders, and the tall pale throat above them, so slim and young.
Indeed, there are few more beautiful things in the world than a young throat--be it girl's or boy's, bird's or beast's.
The scarlet flower she had plucked at the door she wore now between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She looked at the girl in the gla.s.s a long, long time, and the girl looked back at her. But it was not the look of the woman who counts and examines her weapons, for Poppy Destin was heart-whole; she had never yet looked into her gla.s.s to see how she was reflected in some man's eyes. Always she looked to wonder. The transformation of herself from what she had been only six years ago to what she was now at eighteen, never ceased to fascinate and amaze her. When she thought of the tormented, tragic features she had feared to catch a glimpse of, and looked now into that narrow scarlet-lipped, lilac-eyed subtle face, crowned with fronds of black, black hair, she believed she must be witnessing a miracle. When she remembered her aching, thin, childish body, beaten, emaciated, lank, and beheld herself now, long-limbed, apple-breasted, with the slim strong grace and beauty of a Greek boy, she could have shouted for joy and amazement at the wonder of it all.
Yet in the old white farmhouse where she had found refuge and a remarkable education, she had been able to watch with her own eyes the change of the famished, wretched little two-leaved seedling into a beautiful flowering plant.
She had often thought of herself as one set alone in an arid waste to travel where and how she could, with no help from anyone, and who, in her terrible travelling had found hidden gifts by the wayside, and little pools of consolation to lave her wounds and her weary heart, little patches of flowers to refresh her senses--all left there for her by the loving forethought of those who had travelled that way before her; her beauty, her voice, the grace of her body, her clear understanding, grace of tongue, had come upon her as she travelled to womanhood--all so unexpectedly; all wonderful gifts hidden deeply away until she came suddenly upon them, one by one.