Poppy Part 45

"You need be colour-blind when you look at his eyes," she said unpleasantly; "but some people have a morbid liking for deformity."

They all looked astonished.

"_Deformity!_" cried Mrs. Cap.r.o.n; "why, everybody admires his striking eyes!"

"And, _dear_ lady," said Abinger, with great _tendresse_, "do you really suppose that the colour of Carson's eyes has anything to do with it?

It's the flame inside him that draws us and scorches us. He's made up of fire and iron, and----"

"Bra.s.s," said Mrs. Gruyere neatly--for her.

At this opportune moment Carson sauntered round the corner and joined them, and Mrs. Gruyere's face became so like a Bougainvillea flower that there was hardly any difference, except that the Bougainvillea was prettier.

"How do you do, Sir Evelyn?" said Mrs. Portal, tendering him her hand tranquilly. "Talking of bra.s.s, can it be true that you are very rich?"

Seeing no chair, Carson seated himself next to Abinger on the floor--"two bad, dissolute men, cheek by jowl," said Mrs. Gruyere to herself.

"Not very," he said apologetically, smiling at them all with his unusual eyes. "Not so rich as Abinger. He says he has two pounds a week for life. But we think he exaggerates."

Mrs. Portal and Mrs. Cap.r.o.n began to laugh, and Mrs. Lace to wonder how they could wear such nice boots on such small incomes. But Mrs. Gruyere, thoroughly disgusted with the contemptible tone of the conversation, was about to rise and leave the scene, when there came a general exodus from the drawing-room, preceded by Portal and a girl, who was laughing in her throat like a bird about to begin a song.

It was Poppy.

The two bad men looked up.

She was amazingly arrayed in a gown that was a poem composed in France--silky, creamy muslin, curving from throat to hip, and from hip to foot in sleek full folds like the draperies of a statue. Some unwonted emotion had brought a faint spot of colour to the high-pitched bones of her cheeks, and the pupils of her eyes were so large they seemed to fill her eyes with darkness. She wore a wide hat of pastel-blue straw, wreathed with silken poppies of an ashen shade, and round her neck was slung a great rope of blue-and-green Egyptian scarabei, which had cost her the whole price of one of her plays, and which repaid her now by adding in some mysterious way to her glowing personality.

Clem Portal rose, and, under cover of general conversation, said swiftly to her:

"If Mrs. Gruyere puts you to the question--_you paint_--charming little water-colours. You are going to do my miniature."

Poppy stood there, smiling at her through the spraying veils of her hair. Her glowing loveliness had the effect of making the other women in the verandah seem colourless. Even Mary Cap.r.o.n's cla.s.sical beauty was dimmed.

Carson felt the old dream stir. He gave her a long, long look. As for Abinger, the expression of utter astonishment and bewilderment had pa.s.sed from his face; he was smiling.

"So _this_ is Miss Rosalind Chard!" he said softly, but not too softly for Carson to hear him.

"_Who_ is she, do you say?" he asked in a low tone.

They had both risen from the floor.

"A Cheltenham College girl, with pretty ankles," was the enigmatic response.

Unaccountably, they both found themselves at Mrs. Portal's elbow. She introduced them with a gay inclusive little: "_Les amis de mes amis sont mes amis_"; then turned away to bid a guest good-bye.

Miss Chard met Abinger's insolent mocking glance fearlessly, with a prepared heart and, therefore, a prepared smile; then turned to Carson for the first time: looking into his eyes the smile drifted out of her face and suddenly she put up one of her hands and touched, with a curious mystical movement, a dark-green stone she wore at her throat as a brooch. To both men she gave the impression that she was crossing herself, or touching a talisman against something evil.

Abinger stared, grinning. Carson, extremely disconcerted, appeared to turn a deeper shade of brown, and his eyebrows came together in an unbecoming line over his brilliant, sad eyes. Abinger, well acquainted with the Irishman's temper, knew that the girl's action had got him on the raw. If she had been a man she would have been made answerable for a deadly insult. As it was, Carson struggled horribly with himself for a moment, then smiled and made a characteristic remark.

"You are very _un-Irish_, Miss Chard, in spite of your face and your superst.i.tions."

This, said with great grace and gentleness, meant that no real Irishwoman would have had the abominable taste to notice what Mrs.

Gruyere had termed his "deformity." But the girl either could not, or would not, taste the salty flavour of his compliment. She made a curious answer.

"I do not profess to be Irish."

For some reason Carson took this for a fresh affront, and it was more than he could put up with. All his easily-lighted fires were ablaze now, and the reflection of them could be seen in his eyes. He gave her one fierce look, then turned away without a word. Abinger stood grinning.

But the lilac eyes filled with tears, and the scarlet mouth went down at the corners like a child's.

"Oh, you mustn't mind Carson," said Abinger easily. "You see, he has unfortunately got a real Irish monkey for sale."

"An Irish monkey?"

"Yes. Have you never heard of the species? Carson's is quite famous. It used to be a source of revenue to the Transvaal and Rhodesia for years--they thought nothing of giving him fifty pounds for letting it out on the spree."

Her tears had slipped back unused to whence they came; she was now dry-eyed and rather haughty.

"How could I know?" she began stiffly.

Abinger apparently thought it not wholly out of place to deliver her a short lecture on the undesirability of hurting people's feelings, together with the information that Carson, though hot-tempered and rather mad, was one of the finest gentlemen in the world and happened to share the misfortune of his nationality with a few of the most charming people in South Africa, not excluding their pleasant hostess--Mrs.

Portal.

By the time he had finished his remarks Miss Chard had regained her tranquillity.

"Thank you," said she sweetly. "I think it very nice and friendly of you to tell me all these things. I suppose you are an Irishman, too?"

Some emotion kept Abinger dumb for several seconds; then under her tranquil gaze he recovered himself.

"No, I am a cosmopolitan; incidentally of Scotch birth."

"Indeed!" Miss Chard looked politely interested. "You flatter yourself chiefly on the first, I suppose?"

"I did, until to-day."

"To-day?"

"Yes. A cosmopolitan's chief pride, you see, is in the fact that he can conceal his nationality, whilst able to detect instantly that of the person he is speaking to. Now I should never have guessed that _you_ are--English."

Her colour remained unchanged: her eyes regarded him steadfastly.

"You took me for some new kind of barbarian, perhaps?"

He moved a hand deprecatingly: "Not at all; but if I had been asked for an expression of opinion, I should have said, 'A little Irish vagabond dragged up in Africa.'"

The girl's sweet laugh fell from her lips.

"What a ridiculous thing to say! You evidently have not heard that I have only been in Africa for a few weeks or so--my _first_ visit."

Then, as though the conversation had ceased to interest her, she turned away and began to talk to Portal--who introduced to her a man with a satanic expression on a woman's mouth as Dr. Ferrand. The doctor immediately began to talk to her about "home!"