Part 9 (1/2)
”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, rus.h.i.+ng 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?”