Poppy Part 19

"Old Mother Africa! What have you hidden in your bosom for me?" she whispered.... "I believe that if I sleep on your breast to-night I will dream my destiny. I love you, and you love me.... I am your child ... a poppy growing in your old brown bosom. You are the only mother I have ever known.... Whatsoever you give unto me, I will take and say it is good. I feel predestined to-night.... If I lay my ear to you, will I hear the foot-falls of my fate approaching?... What is there for me?

Fame? Love? Those are the only two things in the world! ... but no one can have them both it is said.... Which have you for me, Mother? Will you tell me in a dream?... I will sleep here to-night," she said at last; and shutting her eyes she lay still.

A man, coming very softly and wonderingly across the gra.s.s lawns, thought he saw a slim beam of moonlight lying there, and gave a startled exclamation when it sprang up and flickered into a cl.u.s.ter of tall shrubs.

"That was an odd thing!" he said to himself. "I'll swear I saw.... And yet there is no moon to-night!"

He stood long, looking into the darkness of the bushes until at last he imagined that he saw a moonbeam, shaped graciously like a woman's face, looking back at him. But when he approached it retreated. He stepped back again and it returned.

"H'm!" he remarked; "I must have a bad attack when I see moonbeam faces on a moonless night!"

The wedge of moonlight in the bushes seemed to him to give out two little gleams at that.

"This is a fool's game," said the man aloud. "I must go behind these bushes and see where this thing begins and ends."

Instantly the moonbeam disappeared altogether.

"I thought so," he muttered. "Then it _is_ a woman, and I'm not delirious yet, though by the Lord my head feels.... I wonder if she will come back if I behave myself very nicely.... I'd like to see that face a little closer ... it looked.... Is it possible that I've made a mistake and this is not Portal's place at all? Perhaps I've found my way into Brookfield's zenana! It was _something_ like the gate Bram pointed out to me yesterday.... But what am I doing _here_, by the way?... I wish someone would tell me ... perhaps she will ... how can I get her to come back? ... it might be a good idea to light a cigar and let her see my guileless features.... I think I'll sit down too ... it's odd how queer I feel!" He sat down in the gra.s.s among the fallen stars, a tall, powerful figure in a light-grey lounge suit, and taking out a cigar he carefully lighted it, making as long a process of the lighting as possible. Then he threw away the remains of the match and looked up at the bushes, but his dazzled eyes could see no wedge of moonlight in the Egyptian darkness. It was there, however. And by the time the match had burnt his fingers, Poppy had been able to take a long absorbing look at what seemed to her the most wonderful face she had ever seen. She believed that in that short time she had read all that should, and should not, be written on the face of a man--strength, weakness, tenderness, tyranny, gentleness, bitterness, cynicism, gaiety, melancholy, courage, despair. But how came he here? How had he found his way through a locked gate? Was it possible that he had come through the _boys'_ compound? ... or by way of her secret hole in the summer-house? ... but he had not come from either of these directions.

What did he want?

In the meantime the man was holding his cigar between his knees and gazing in her direction.

"O moon of my desire that knows no wane," he gently misquoted, "come out and talk to me!"

His voice had a rustle in it of leaves before the wind. No woman could listen to it cold-hearted.

"But what are you doing in my garden?" she said in her own entrancing tones.

The man's veins thrilled in turn.

"_Is_ it your garden? I was looking for the house of a friend. I'll go if you tell me to, but I'd much rather sit here and listen to your voice. I can't see you very well--" he finished with an air of complaint.

"How did you get in?" asked Poppy. "Isn't the gate locked?"

"My _boys_ have a name for me of which one translation runs--all gates open to him."

"But it _must_ be locked."

"It is not, I a.s.sure you. Though if this were my garden, it should always be--with me inside."

"You talk very oddly," said she, trying to speak coldly; "nearly as oddly as old Khayyam himself ... I trust not for the same reason!"

"You wrong me bitterly," he said. "I am trying to speak and behave with unusual decorum. It is the poetry of the night which affects me in spite of myself. You suspect some more occult reason, I see, but I can a.s.sure you on my honour that I dined quietly at the Club and drank no more than one whiskey-and-soda with my dinner."

A silence prevailed.

At last he said: "I think it would be a gentle and kind thing to do, to come and sit near me on the gra.s.s. I would like to look at you closely and see if you are a moonbeam I used to know long ago in Rhodesia."

"I have never been in Rhodesia."

"No? Then perhaps it was in my own land. The women there have voices like you.

"There be none of beauty's daughters With a magic like thee, And like music on the waters Is thy sweet voice to me--"

Poppy heard the rustle of leaves again through Byron's beautiful words, and a little s.h.i.+ver of happiness flew through her. She hoped he would sit there for ever, beguiling her with his sweet Irish tongue.

"Tell me that you came from Ireland and I'll believe you with all my heart," said he next.

"No; I was born out here."

"In this bad, mad land?" His voice had a note of disappointment in it; he added: "I wish _you_ were mad and bad--but that is too much to expect, I suppose?"

"Why do you wish it?"

"Because then you would come and sit by me on the gra.s.s and talk to me.

I am a very bad man, and I want company."

"But," said Poppy softly, "_Il n'est jamais de mal en bonne compagnie._"

"Voltaire in an African garden! O Lord! I _must_ be delirious," he muttered to himself. "I suppose you haven't such a thing as a pinch of quinine about you?"

Poppy having very little about her at that time, began to laugh. Her laugh was rather like the first note of a bird's song, and she understood very well when he said:

"O thrush, sing again!"

"I think you must really be a little bit mad----"

"If you would only be a little bit bad----"

"Oh, I am--I often am----"

"Where will you sit? On my right there is a patch of lesser darkness that smells pa.s.sing sweet, and might be mignonette; on my left----"

"No; I can't come over there; don't ask me."

Her voice was tremulous now, for in her blood there was the strangest, wildest urging to come at his call. She wondered how long she could hold out against it--if he did not go soon.

"Why should you want me to?"

"Why? Because I want to know whether you are real ... or only a wraith, a streak of moonlight, a phantom of my brain. I want to be sure that the world is still going round, and that I am still in it. All I can see is a faint wedge-shaped gleam of white, crowned with strange stars. Have you tiny white stars in the darkness of your hair? Is your hair as black as the raven's wing, as night--as h.e.l.l?"

"Yes; it is."

"And are your eyes long cameos of carved moonlight?"

"They are indeed!"

"Then Carissima--Adorissima ... come and sit on the gra.s.s."