Read Ebook: Poppy: The Story of a South African Girl by Stockley Cynthia

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 2285 lines and 135191 words, and 46 pages

"Well, but how silly of you to cry and make your eyes red for nothing! You've got such pretty eyes, too!"

Poppy stared at her, gasping.

"Oh! If I only thought I had pretty eyes--" she said breathlessly.

"Well, you have indeed. And they are most uncommon too--just the colour of lilac, and 'put in with a smutty finger' like an Irish girl's. Are you Irish?"

Poppy was about to inform her that she was a Fenian, but she thought better of it.

"I was born here in Bloemfontein," she answered.

"Yes. I am always cross. I hate everybody."

"Good heavens! What a little savage! but you shouldn't. It makes one so ugly to hate."

"Does it?" Eagerly. "Do you think if I was never cross I'd get beautiful?"

"You are much more likely to," said the other encouragingly, thinking in the meantime that nothing could ever make harmonious and beautiful that small tormented face.

"Is that why you are so beautiful?" was the next question.

The beauty smiled: a little complacently perhaps.

"I expect so. I am never cross and never unhappy, and I never mean to let anyone make me so." She opened her brown holland sunshade lined with sea-green silk and got up to go.

"Now be sure and remember that," she said pleasantly. "Never cry, never be unhappy, never hate anyone, and never be cross and--you'll see how beautiful you'll become."

"Oh, I will, I will," cried Poppy ardently.

"Now I must go," said the beautiful one. "I want to take one last walk round your pretty Bloemfontein, because I am going back to Cape Town to-morrow."

"Have you any little girls in Cape Town?" asked Poppy, wishing to detain her a little longer. She laughed at that.

"You funny child! Why I'm not even married. But I'm going to be, and to the most fascinating man in Africa."

"Is his name Lancelot?"

"No. His name is Nick Capron. How old are you, child?"

"Nine."

"Only nine! You look about thirteen, you poor little thing. Well, good-bye, I must really go."

"Good-bye; and thank you so much for speaking to me," Poppy stammered. She felt that she could adore the beautiful study in brown holland, who only laughed at her again and went on her way.

Ostrich.

These were a few of the terrible obstacles in the path to beauty which she set herself to overcome. There were other arts, too, she would practise to the same end. She would brush her hair until it sprang into waves, even as the hair of the beautiful one in brown. She would cut her eyelashes, as Clara did, to make them thick and long. She would run and jump, even when she was tired, to make her body strong and her cheeks pink. She would walk upright, even when she had the pain in her stomach, so that she might grow tall and graceful. Furthermore, she would find out from old Sara where that wonderful milky cactus grew, which the young Basuto girls gathered and rubbed upon their breasts in the moonlight to make them grow round and firm as young apples.

But it was hard in the house of Aunt Lena Kennedy to attain beauty through virtue.

"Ah! you bad-tempered little cat!" was the usual preliminary; "why can't you be grateful to me for taking the trouble to keep you clean? It isn't every aunt by marriage who would do it, I can tell you. I suppose you'd like to go about with the dirt ingrained in you! What are you shivering and cringing like that for? Are you ashamed of your own body?"

"It is horrible to be naked, aunt," she would retort, striving to keep tears from bursting forth and full of apprehension that someone might come into the wide-open kitchen doors.

Grasshopper.

With a rough flannel and blue mottled soap she scoured Poppy's body and face as if it had been the face of a rock; scrubbing and rubbing until the skin crackled like a fire beneath her vigorous hand. Later came a scraping down with a bath towel made of something of the same fibre as a door-mat. At last Poppy crept to her bed, her eyes like pin-points in her head from the scalding of the strong soap; her hair strained back from her sore, glazed face and plaited as tightly as possible into two pig-tails behind her ears.

Those were the nights when a thousand devils ate at her heart and fought within her, and she knew she could never be beautiful. She would lie awake for hours, just to loathe her aunt and concoct tortures for her. In imagination she cut slits in that hated body and filled them with salt and mustard, or anything that would burn; dug sharp knives into the cruel heart; saw the narrow hard face lying on the floor and beat into it with a hammer until it was red, red, red--and everything was red.

"Scorpion! Scorpion!" she would rave.

Worn out at last and half asleep she would choke and groan and bite her pillow, thinking she had her enemy under her hands, until her cousins in their big bed across the room would call out:

"Ma! I wish you would come and speak to Miss Poppy here. She's calling you a 'scorpion'!"

The chances were that Mrs. Kennedy, in no pleasant temper after all her exertions, would fly into the room, tear down the bedclothes, and administer two or three stinging slaps on Poppy's bare body, crying out upon her for an ungrateful, vile-tempered little fagot.

Some time after midnight Poppy would weep herself to sleep.

Once Poppy used to go to St. Gabriel's Infant School, where she had learned to read and write; but when the twins arrived in the world, Aunt Lena could no longer spare her from home, and her education languished for three years. But at last there came a letter from her god-mother in Port Elizabeth saying that she had sent five pounds to St. Michael's Home, asking the Sisters to give Poppy as much education as possible for that sum.

But school was only the beginning of a fresh era of misery. The girls stared at her old boots and sneered at her pugaree, and no one would be friends with her because she wore white cotton stockings, which were only sixpence a pair, and sold to Kaffir girls to wear on Sundays.

Poppy gave back sneer for sneer and taunt for taunt with great versatility; but her heart was sometimes near bursting under the galatea overall. It seemed to her that even the teachers despised her because of her shabbiness and ugliness, and that when she worked hard at her lessons she got less praise than the pretty girls. "Yes! it's because I'm ugly, and everything I wear is ugly," she whispered to herself as she walked home alone every day, hurrying because she knew the children would be dressed and ready, waiting to be taken to the Kopje as soon as she had bolted her cold dinner. Clara's and Emily's dinner was always kept hot. They went to the Dames' Institute, another school of some importance where all the nice high Dutch Boers sent their children: and they got home at two o'clock. Mrs. Kennedy said she would keep no dinner hot later than that hour, so that Poppy, arriving at three, found her stewed mutton cold in a dish of fatty gravy, and sometimes a bit of cold suet pudding. She would always have "filled up" contentedly enough with bread, but Mrs. Kennedy grumbled when too much bread was eaten, as she only baked once a week.

At last, tired out, hopeless, sick with bitter crying, she would lay her head against an old mimosa tree that had a curve in its trunk like the curve of a mother's arm, and the soft odour of the fluffy round yellow blossoms would steal over her. Later, a land of peace and strength seemed to come out of the tree to her, and she would have courage to get up and go on her way.

One of the teachers, Miss Briggs, was always scolding her about her hands. She would draw the attention of the whole class to them, covering Poppy with shame. They were not big hands like Clara's and Emily's but they were rough and coarse with housework and through being continually in the water washing stockings and handkerchiefs and plates; and in the winter they got horribly chapped, with blood marks all over them, so that the teachers couldn't bear to see them and the girls used to say "Sis!" when she reached for anything. Her nails, too, were often untidy, and her hair. She never had time in the mornings to give it more than just one brush and tie it back in her neck, and she used to have to clean her nails with a pin or a mimosa thorn while she was hurrying to school, learning her lessons on the way. It was the only time she had to learn them, except in the afternoons when she took the children out. If they were good and would stay happy, she could get out her books from under the pram seat and learn; but almost immediately Ina would want to be played with, or Georgie would fall down and hurt himself and whimper in her arms for half an hour. The fact was that the children had been brought up to believe that Poppy was in the world entirely for their comfort and convenience, and they could not bear to see her doing anything that was not for them.

"I'll tell ma," was their parrot cry: and that meant boxes on the ear.

"I up with my hand" was a favourite phrase of Aunt Lena's.

In the evenings Ina must always be sung to sleep, and sometimes would not go off for more than an hour. Then Mrs. Kennedy would say briskly:

"Now get your lessons done, Porpie!"

But by then Poppy's head would be aching and her eyes would hardly keep open, and what she did learn would not stay in her head until the next morning.

And after all, none of the teachers seemed to care much whether she learned them or not. If by accident she did them well, she got no praise; if she did them ill she was scolded and the lesson was "returned"--that meant being kept in on Friday afternoons until the lesson had been learnt or rewritten. But when Friday afternoon came, Poppy could not stay; there were the children to be taken out, and her ears would be boxed if she were too late to do that; she would get no tea, and the whole house would be thoroughly upset. So the "returned" lessons had to go to the wall. She would slink home when supposed to be taking recreation in the play-ground before the "returned" bell rang. That meant bad conduct marks, unpopularity with the teachers, and as the deserted Fridays mounted up--all hope lost of gaining a prize. After a while the teachers said she was incorrigible, and gave her no more attention.

"I wonder you bother to come to school at all, Poppy," was the favourite gibe of Miss Briggs.

When examination days came she did badly, except in history and geography, which she liked and found easy.

Break-up day was the worst of all.

The girls all came in their pretty soft white frocks and looked sweet. Only Poppy was ugly, in a piqu? frock, starched like a board, her hair frizzed out in a bush, her pale face looking yellow and sullen against the over-blued white dress; her long legs and her narrow feet longer and narrower than ever in white stockings and elastic-sided boots.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet