Читать книгу Poppy - Stockley Cynthia - Страница 8

He looked round in a friendly, boyish way that rather charmed her.

"By Jove! How pretty you've made this place look! It's quite different."

"Ah, I suppose you were here before, when it was a chamber of horrors," said Poppy coolly. "I never saw a more impossible place in my life."

He looked at her curiously as though greatly surprised. Then he said carelessly, and rather curtly she thought:

"Oh, yes, I have been here before."

He sat down in one of the easy chairs and Poppy began to put in order some books that had fallen from the book-case on to the floor. When she turned she found him still staring at her in that curious fashion, but without his smile. She missed it because it was a singularly heart-warming smile.

"The last people here were rather addicted to antimacassars and glass-shades and things," she said, appearing not to notice his curious look; "and as it seemed to me a pity to let such things spoil a pretty room, I put them out."

"Oh!" was all he vouchsafed. She felt chilled. But here Sophie burst into the room, very magnificent and highly coloured.

"How sweet of you to come, Mr. Bramham," one hand up to her hair and the other outstretched, while her body performed the Grecian bend.

"Rosalind, do see about tea, there's a dear. I'm sure Mr. Bramham must be parched."

Correctly estimating this as a hint to leave them alone, Poppy retreated to the kitchen, and did not reappear until she followed Piccanin in with the tea-tray. Sophie was saying, "Do bring him around, Mr. Bramham. We should just love to meet him."

Poppy, arranging the cups on the table, had a pardonable curiosity to know whom she should just love to meet; but she made no remark; merely sat down.

"Shall I pour out tea, Sophie?"

The latter nodded, but made no other attempt to include her in the conversation, continuing to monopolise Mr. Bramham entirely.

In a short time Poppy became wearied of this state of affairs. After observing "Brammie's" boots, his fingers, his tie, the shape of his lips, his hair, the size of his ears, and his manner of sitting on a chair (all while she was apparently arranging the cups and looking into the teapot to see if the tea was drawing properly), the "eternal feminine," which is only another name for the dormant cat in every woman, awoke in her. She did not exactly want "Brammie" for herself, but she decided that he was too nice for Sophie.

Immediately afterwards, Bramham began to realise that there was a charming personality in the room.

"Do you take sugar?" blew like a cool little western wind into his right ear; while on his left, Sophie Cornell was bombarding him with instructions to bring someone to call.

Poppy got her answer first, and a sudden glance of recognition fell upon the slim, pale hands amongst the tea-cups; then:

"Certainly, Miss Cornell! I'll ask him to come, but I can't promise that he will. He's not much given to calling."

"Bosh! I know he goes to the Caprons and the Portals—I've seen him with that horrid Mrs. Portal."

"Ah! you don't admire Mrs. Portal?"

"I don't see anything to admire," said Sophie. "She is not a bit smart, and her hats are simply awful!"

"She is considered one of the most delightful women in South Africa," said Bramham.

"Oh, she may be," Sophie's air was unbelieving; "but I don't see where it comes in."

She took her tea sulkily from Poppy's hand. Bramham looked bored. The little western wind blew again in his ear.

"Perhaps her charm is not to be seen. Perhaps it is an essence—a fragrance——"

Sophie scoffed at what she did not understand.

"Oh, you and your old poetry——"

"That's just what it is," said Bramham. "There's an odour of happiness about her that infects everyone who comes near her—no one cares a hang about what she wears or anything like that."

"Well, I don't like her, anyway," said Sophie, now thoroughly ill-tempered, "and I don't see why you do. She's covered with freckles."

That should have ended the matter, but Poppy's taste for torment was whetted.

"Perhaps Mr. Bramham doesn't know her as well as you do, Sophie," she said softly.

Sophie glared. Mr. Bramham looked amused. They all knew that Mrs. Portal could never be anything but a name to Sophie—that it was really an impertinence on her part to be discussing Mrs. Portal at all.

"Do you know her?" she retorted rudely.

"Of course not!" answered Poppy. "I know no one in Durban except you, Sophie—and now Mr. Bramham," she smiled, a sudden smile of great sweetness at Bramham, and at that he gave her his whole attention.

"That's dull for you, surely!"

"Oh, no! I have plenty to do; and books to read; and how can one be dull in such a lovely place as Natal?"

The sun came out in Bramham. He was a Natalian and proud of it.

"I believe she gets up in the morning and goes out to see if the sun rises!" said Sophie, as if denouncing the conclusive symptom of idiotcy.

The cold look with which Bramham had at first surveyed Poppy had now quite disappeared, and his grey-eyed smile was all for her. He also was a sun-rise man.

"Do you like books?" he asked. "I can lend you any amount. We get all the new ones, and as soon as they're read the Lord knows where they go! I'll send you some up, if I may."

"Thank you, that will be good of you," said Poppy with enthusiasm.

"Send her up all the old poetry books you can find," jeered Sophie. "Personally, I like a jolly good yellow-back."

Mr. Bramham looked extremely bored by this priceless piece of information, and more so still when she returned immediately to the subject of the men she was anxious to meet. Poppy got up and, opening the piano, began to play a little gay air to which she whistled softly; she never sang.

"I'm just dying to know him," said Sophie ardently. "He looks as though he has committed every sin you ever heard of. And how did he get that fearful scar right across his face? Vitriol?"

The little air at the piano stopped suddenly.

"I really couldn't tell you. He is not communicative on the subject," said Bramham drily. "But perhaps he will unfold to you—do go on playing, Miss Chard!"

He adored music, and had an excellent view of an extraordinarily pretty pair of ankles under the music-stool.

Poppy complied, but she changed the air to something savage that made Bramham think of a Zulu war-chant.

"Well, I shall certainly ask him when I meet him. I wonder you haven't been able to find out! He lives with you, doesn't he?"

"He is staying with me, at present, yes." Bramham's tone was full of weariness.

"And that dark, strange Irishman everyone is talking about—Carson—he is staying with you, too, isn't he?"

"Yes."

"Are they great friends?"

"We all know each other very well."

Miss Cornell laughed genially.

"I should say you do—isn't it true that you are called the three bad men all over Africa—come now?"

"I'm afraid someone has been filling your head with nonsense. Who spreads these stories, I wonder?"

"Ah, yes, that's all very well, but you know it's true, all the same. You are three dangerous, fascinating men, everyone says so, and the Kaffirs have names for you all. What is yours, Mr. Bramham?"

"Kaffirs have names for everybody if one had time to find out what they were."

"Oh, I know—Umkoomata—that's what they call you. Now, what wickedness can that mean?"

"Who tells you these wonderful things, my dear young lady? You really have a lot of inside information about everything. You should start a newspaper." Bramham was slightly exasperated.

"Oh, I know a lot more besides that," said Miss Cornell, shaking her finger at him archly. "About you, and Mr. Carson, too. He is going up on a secret expedition into Borapota for the English Government, isn't he?"

"Very secret, apparently," thought Bramham. "How the devil do these things leak out?"

"Something or other, yes," he said aloud.

"They say the English Government thinks an awful lot of him."

"Yes, he's a clever fellow," said Bramham, casually. No one would have supposed him to be speaking of a man dearer to him than a brother. Bramham did not wear his heart where it could be pecked at by the Sophie Cornells of the world.

Poppy got up from the piano, and Bramham got up, too, and looked at his watch.

"I must be off," said he, with a great air of business-hurry, which left him as soon as he got out of the gate.

"Now, don't forget to bring Mr. Abinger next time," Sophie called after him from the verandah; "and that Mr. Carson, too," she added, as an afterthought.

Poppy positively blushed for her.

"Sophie, how can you! It was perfectly plain that he did not want to bring the man—and that he doesn't intend to, anyway. Are you really as dense as you pretend to be?"

"Bosh!" said Sophie, retiring to the table and beginning to make a fresh onslaught on the bread-and-butter. "They'll turn up here in a day or two, you'll see. Isn't there any jam, I wonder?"

"I shall not see anything of the kind. I wash my hands of you and your men friends. I didn't engage to meet anyone but Mr. Bramham, and I've done all I promised."

She had done a little more than she had promised, as she very well knew, but observation was not Sophie's strong point, as her next remark made plain.

"Now, don't be cross just because he didn't admire you. I told you to put on my silk blouse, didn't I?"

Poppy laughed her entrancing laugh.

"Do you really think men care for clothes, Sophie?"

"Of course they do! They love to see a well-dressed woman—especially when they don't have to pay for the dress. Lots of men won't even be seen with a woman unless she's perfectly turned out. Brookie is like that; and I'll bet that man Abinger is, too!"

"Is he, indeed! Then remove him far from me. I'm afraid you won't suit him, either Sophie," with a touch of malice.

"Why not? Don't I pay enough for my clothes? I dress far better than Mrs. Portal does, anyway. She always has on faded old linens and things, and I've only seen her in two hats since I came here—both of them awful!"

"I thought she looked extremely nice when I saw her."

"Well, your taste and mine differ, my dear. I think she is a frump. Capron's wife now is good looking, and always dressed mag-nif-icently. But it makes a person sick to see the way they freeze on to all the decent men and never let them meet anyone else."

"But do the men want to meet anyone else? If one woman is witty, and the other pretty, what more is there to be desired?"

"You talk like a book with all the pages torn out, and the cover lost," said Sophie irritably.

Poppy laughed provokingly, and lay back in her chair, thinking—the whole thing was rather amazing. Abinger still here, and moving amongst pretty and witty women, whilst he pretended to be up in the Transvaal! His friend Umkoomata the Sturdy One, whom she had told herself she would like to know, here too, visiting Sophie Cornell, whom he plainly didn't like. Nick Capron! How odd the world was! She began to ponder about Intandugaza, too—whether he was the mysterious dark Irishman who went on secret expeditions——

"Man! Rosalind," broke in Sophie suddenly. "That fellow Abinger is just crazy to meet me. We ran into each other as I was coming out of Brookie's office yesterday, and he gave me a look that made me go hot all over. He's got those bad eyes that make you feel curly all down your spine—you know!"

Poppy turned away from her. With the remembrance of certain recent sensations still burning within her, she could not say that she did not know; but her mouth expressed weariness and disgust.

"It seems to me that you are talking about some kind of brute, Sophie," she said.

"Brute! Oh, I don't know," said Sophie, and laughed. The laugh sent Poppy out of the room with her teeth in her lip.

"I can't stand Sophie any longer," she said to herself in her own garden, looking at the rose-red walls of the house and the flaming flowers on the plant before the door. As she went indoors her thought changed; she began to smile subtly to herself.

"So Luce is in Durban all the time! He simply pretended to go away, to avoid discussing that matter of going out with me! And Mrs. Nick Capron! If I were to go out here, should I meet her? And would she recognise in me, I wonder, the little wretched vagabond of six years ago?"

She reached her glass, and looked in.

"I think not."