When first she received this letter, Poppy read it and flung it from her. But in the calm that came after a week's intolerable torment of longing, and despair, she read it again. The fierce fires that had consumed her were burning low then, and cast but a faint and dreary flicker down the pathway of the future. That future looked a land all shadows and gloom, whatsoever pathway she chose to take towards it. The simplest thing to do seemed the most desirable; and surely it was simplest just to let things stay as they were! She would tell Luce Abinger that her choice was to let things remain as they had always been, and then she would live on, drifting through the weary days and months and years, working a little every day, until work at last would become everything and fill her whole life. Perhaps, as she had missed love she would find fame. It did not seem to matter very much whether she did or not.
All she asked was to find peace. Knowing very little of life she did not realise that in asking for this she asked for everything. For no woman finds peace until she has tasted of all the poisoned dishes at the banquet of life—and then the peace is either of the dead body or the dead mind.
After those seven days of suffering, Poppy sat with her broken love-dream, like a pale child with a broken toy. She thought because she was numb that all was over then, except the dreary living through the dreary days. But the young have a great capacity for suffering, and she had forgotten how very young and strong she was, and how hot the blood ran in her veins. After a day she was back again in the trough of the sea. When at last she emerged she was a child no longer, but a woman with something to hide from the world—a wound that bled inwardly and would always ache.
Abinger had been gone nearly three weeks then, and wrote to say that he should probably be away for two or three months, as he was selling all the property he owned on the Rand, and the final settlements would take him quite that time. The thought of the long respite from his presence was a great relief to the girl, and by unconsciously lifting a little of the strain from her mind helped her to come back the sooner to her normal self. Kykie's delight was enormous when Poppy was to be seen wandering aimlessly through the house once more and into the garden; though there she never stayed long now, and there were parts of it she did not go near.
From Kykie she learned incidentally, and without resentment, that the front gate was locked once more and the key safe with Abinger. That reminded her of her secret exit, and then she remembered Sophie Cornell, whose image had quite faded from her memory. It occurred to her that she ought to visit her self-imposed employer, and make her excuses and farewells as simply as possible, for something in her now strongly repudiated further association with the Colonial girl.
The visit and quarrel had braced her in a remarkable way. Afterwards she felt that in spite of all she was really alive still, and she found herself regretting that through Sophie's garden must lie her only way into the world beyond. The restrictions of the house began to irk her, and she was afraid of the garden. She felt she must go out. She determined to visit the sea and explore the Berea; choosing such times as would be safest to make entries and exits through the little opening in the passion-flower house. In the early mornings she knew well that wild horses might pass through Sophie's garden without her knowing or caring—and again, under cover of darkness it would be simple to slip through unseen. She told Kykie that in the future she always desired dinner at six-thirty; and Kykie, who had grown curiously meek and obedient of late, made no demur. This arrangement gave Poppy a long evening to herself, and she had never allowed anyone to intrude upon her evening hours. It would be supposed that she spent them in the garden, for always she had found great pleasure in wandering in the moonlight, and in the early morning hours, and the servants were well acquainted with her habits.
So she took to going forth. As soon as darkness fell she would depart, darkly-cloaked and with her head draped mantilla-wise, to see what the forbidden world looked like "'twixt gloam and moon." Her favourite route was by the Musgrave Road, a long thoroughfare that leads to the top of the Berea. Over gates would come to her glimpses of charmingly-lighted rooms, and pretty women sitting down to dinner, or sauntering with their husbands, enjoying the gardens after the heat of the day. Past one house and another she would go, catching little pictures between the trees, at windows, and through open doors—sometimes an exquisite little vision of a mother romping with her children and kissing them good-night; or a husband standing back with a critical cock to his head to get a better view of his wife's new gown, or the way she had done her hair. She never stayed for the kiss that would come after the verdict, but flew swiftly on with her eyes suddenly hot and teeth set in her lip. Other sights were amusing: a face contorted and a head and arm screwed in the agony of fixing a collar-stud; a man grooming his head before an open window with two brushes, and a drop of something golden out of a bottle. Once she saw quite a sensible-looking man practising a charming smile on himself in the glass, and at that could not restrain a little jeer of delight at the "nobler" sex. When she caught children at windows in their nightgowns, peering out, she just gave a weird "Who! Who!" like the lesser-owl common in Natal, and they scuttled like rats.
These things affected her variously. Times she mocked the peaceful citizens of Natal for Philistines and flesh-potters. Times her heart came into her throat and tears scalded her eyes, and she felt like a prowling hungry jackal. But most often she flung a bitter laugh to the wind and said:
"I have the best of it—better prowl the veldt lean and free, than be caged and full."
Once or twice she had occasion to recall a French saying she had come across while her French was in the elementary stage. She had studied the phrase for an hour or two, and applied the dictionary to it, and eventually it read to the effect that if all the roofs in Paris were lifted one night the devil might be observed in every house lighting the fires to make the pots boil. The remark seemed to have lost some of its original point in translation, but it still bore an air of significance, and came singularly to hand once or twice, startling Poppy to the thought that Paris and Durban are both under the same sky, and that fuel of fire is the same all the world over. On these occasions it was she who scuttled, and she did it with good-will, almost cured of her taste for living pictures. But the pastime was fascinating to a lonely and lonesome creature, and she returned to it.