"Yes, for you, you wicked old thing; silks and satins of every shade of the rainbow. You need never dress in anything else any more."
They spent an engrossed hour unpacking, and afterwards Poppy dined alone, and betook herself to the garden. She knew that she had the whole place and the whole long evening to herself, without disturbance, for it was a peculiarity of Kykie's that she could not keep her eyes open after nine o'clock at night. As for the boys, after they had performed their duties in the kitchen and stables, their time was their own, and they made the most of it elsewhere than within reach or sight of their employers.
It was early still, and though the darkness had fallen, the moon was at the full, and showed to advantage the solemn splendour of the trees, the long soft stretches of sward, and the festooned jungle-like arbours and arcades. In many a winding path she lost her way (for the place was of enormous extent), and had difficulty in locating once more the house or the gate or any point she was acquainted with. Coming to the gate once she tried it, and finding it securely locked she shook it with the sudden fury of a wild thing that finds itself caged. Then she stood still, and presently two great tears rolled down her face; but afterwards her wanderings became curiously systematised. Taking the gate as her starting-post she commenced a détour of the wilderness, keeping to its outskirts and examining as she travelled every inch of the enclosing walls. The part which gave on to the main road she found to be hopelessly impregnable; it had first a high stone wall with a cresting of particularly sharp and jagged bottle-glass; and further, was backed by a species of laurel that grew both tall and bushy, and rattled aggressively if anyone so much as looked at it. Then came a long side-stretch of thick-set green bushes of what she judged—after pinching the leaf and smelling it—to be quince, with an undergrowth of pink pepper. After penetrating this, in a weak spot, and discovering that the outside rampart consisted of galvanised iron, standing lengthways and painted dark green, she did not feel so confident, but she went bravely on, until at last she came to a gate; it also was made of iron and painted green, but though it was unlocked, Poppy did not go through it, for she saw beyond, the stables and iron houses that were evidently the quarters of the black servants. She could hear their voices and the sound of a concertina. Plainly this was the back compound, through which all trades-people must make their way to the house. No doubt there was an entrance at the other side—but it was not for Poppy! She proceeded. The wall continued of the same quality, monotonously familiar; then occurred an impassable jungle that it would have taken a herd of buffalo to make any impression upon. After beating round this for some time, to the detriment of her trailing white gown, Poppy pursued her way with a frowning brow and a quivering under-lip. Next came a hedge of prickly-pear; she turned her head away from this in disgust. Farmers plant prickly-pears round their gardens to keep out cattle. It is the most perfect barrier in the world. Certainly, a human being might cut his way through it; but he would spend the rest of his life picking from his festering flesh tiny invisible white thorns. On and on she marched; it seemed to her that the large pale hands of the pear-hedge flapped mockingly at her. Sometimes she was obliged to make a wide détour to avoid a clump of trees, or a rockery, or a summer-house with a pergola leading to it, smothered with vines and passion-flowers and roses. It seemed that she walked miles and miles. Suddenly she saw light glimmering through a trellised opening, and ran forward. Her hands touched cold wrought-iron. It was the front gate! This time, when she shook it, she did not cry. Her gown was torn, her hair was loosened, there was a scratch on her cheek and blood on her hands, but she laughed.
"Ah, my very dear Luce Abinger," she said, "we shall see if you can keep a creature of the veldt behind a padlock."
Immediately she recommenced a fresh tour of the garden, and though the long hot day and all its incidents must have told upon her strength, she seemed to have suddenly acquired fresh life and buoyancy. She had that within which urged her on—a taste for liberty. At that time it seemed to her that the whole world was too small a place for a free spirit; and that if this were indeed the world, she would somewhere find some desperate edge and leap over, even if it should be into the abyss of nothingness. On this tour she included the arbours and the summer-houses in her itinerary. The third one she came to was only a small hut of a place, but it had a long spire to its roof, and from thence trailed and hung long lines and stalks of the passion plant—everyone knows it: vine-leaved, with great round cream-coloured flowers, a purple outer ring divided into ten thousand tiny leaves, signifying the crowd that gathered to listen to Christ on the Mount; and in the centre, mysteriously arranged, like the dishes upon the table of some oracle, the three loaves and the five fishes! They call it the grenadilla in Africa, and eat its fruit with port wine and cream. Poppy dived in under the trailing vinery, and entered the hut. All round it had a low seat running, but everything was old and damp and rotten she could feel by the touch, and in one place the wood crumbled under her fingers, and thrusting her arm forward, she was able to feel that it was part of the wall itself; there was no further barrier beyond.
She had found an exit.
For a time she sat still on the cool mossy floor of the arbour, trembling a little at the thought of the spiders and strange beasts that might be dropping upon her from above. At last she nerved herself to the point of pushing and urging and disentangling the thick partition of green that kept her in. Her idea was to make an opening without making a gap; something she could re-arrange afterwards, leaving no sign of disturbance.
At length she was through, and behold! she found herself in another garden. Was it a maze too, she wondered rather drearily? A maze without an opening? But no, there was a pleasing openness of view about the place. A few bushes and trees, a straggly flower-bed or two. Almost immediately she came upon a gravelled path; but she did not walk on it, choosing rather to follow its direction by way of the grass and soft earth which enflanked it. In the natural course of events a house was discovered. Quite a simple affair of galvanised iron, painted green, with a verandah running all round it and heaps of shrubs and bushes and creepers to hide its nakedness. Its front verandah was full of pale, heavenly light that was certainly not contributed by the moon; nor could the words that came floating over the bushes into the garden, be, by the wildest and most poetic imagination, endowed with a heavenly meaning.
"Oh, damn it, I'm sick of this rotten typewriter and everything else in the world. I wish Brookie would type his own beastly law-papers."
Poppy approached with the utmost gentleness, and through the screen of a bush covered with tiny pink flowers that smelt of musk she surveyed the scene.