From the garden come the plaintive wheepling of a bird (intermingled with the coachman’s spasmodic snores), while abovethe awning of the door, the stars were wanly paling.
“Prancing Nigger, sah, heah de day. Dair no good waitin’ any more.”
It was on their return from the Villa Alba, that they found a letter signed “Mamma Luna,” announcing the death of Bamboo.
He had gone out, it seemed, upon the sea to avoid the earthquake (leaving his mother at home to take care of the shop), but the boat had overturned, and the evil sharks....
In a room darkened against the sun, Miami, distracted, wept. Crunched by the maw of a great blue shark: “Oh honey.”
Face downward with one limp arm dangling to the floor, she bemoaned her loss: such love-blank, and aching void! Like some desolate, empty cave, filled with clouds, so her heart.
“An’ to t’ink dat I eber teased you!” she moaned, reproaching herself for the heedless past; and as day passed over day, still she wept.
One mid-afternoon, it was some two weeks later, she was reclining lifelesslyacross the bed, gazing at the sunblots on the floor. There had been a mild disturbance of a seismic nature that morning, and indeed slight though unmistakable shocks had been sensed repeatedly of late.
“Intercession” services, fully choral—the latest craze of society—filled the churches at present, sadly at the expense of other places of amusement; many of which had been obliged to close down. A religious revival was in the air, and in the Parks and streets elegant dames would stop one another in their passing carriages, and pour out the stories of their iniquitous lives.
Disturbed by the tolling of a neighbouring bell, Miami reluctantly rose.
“Lord! What a din; it gib a po’ soul de grabe-yahd creeps,” she murmured, lifting the jalousie of a sun-shutter and peering idly out.
Standing in the street was a Chinese Laundrymaid, chatting with two Chinamen with osier baskets, while a gaunt pariahdog was rummaging among some egg-shells and banana-skins in the dust before the gate.
“Dat lil fool-fool Ibum, he throw ebberyt’ing out ob de window, an’ nebba t’ink ob de stink,” she commented, as an odour of decay was wafted in on a gust of the hot trade wind. The trade winds! How pleasantly they used to blow in the village of Mediavilla. The blue trade wind, the gold trade wind caressing the bending canes.... City life, what had it done for any of them, after all? Edna nothing else than a harlot (since she had left them there was no other word), and Charlie fast going to pieces, having joined the Promenade of a notorious Bar with its bright particular galaxy of boys.
“Sh’o, ebberyt’ing happier back dah,” she mused, following the slow gait across the street of some barefooted nuns; soon they would be returning, with many converts and pilgrims, to Sasabonsam, beyond the May Day Mountains, where remained a miraculous image of Our Lady of the Sorrows still intact. How if she joinedthem, too? A desire to express her grief, and thereby ease it, possessed her. In the old times there had been many ways: tribal dances, and wild austerities....
She was still musing, self-absorbed, when her mother, much later, came in from the street.
There had been a great Intercessional, it seemed, at the Cathedral, with hired singers, from the Opera-house and society women as thick as thieves, “gnats,” she had meant to say (Tee-hee!), about a corpse. Arturo Arrivabene ... a voice like a bull ... and she had caught a glimpse of Edna driving on the Avenue Amanda, looking almost Spanish in a bandeau beneath a beautiful grey tilt hat.
But Miami’s abstraction discouraged confidences.
“Why you so triste, Chile? Dair no good, at all, in frettin’.”
“Sh’o nuff.”
“Dat death was on de cards, my deah, an’ dair is no mistakin’ de fac’; an’ as de shark is a rapid feeder it all ober soonerdan wid de crocodile, which is some consolation for dose dat remain to mourn.”
“Sh’o, it bring not an attom to me!”
“’Cos de process ob de crocodile bein’ sloweh dan dat ob de shark—”
“Ah, say no more,” Miami moaned, throwing herself in a storm of grief across the bed. And as all efforts to appease made matters only worse, Mrs. Mouth prudently left her.
“Prancing Nigger, she seem dat sollumcholly an’ depressed,” Mrs. Mouth remarked at dinner, helping herself to some guava-jelly, that had partly dissolved through lack of ice.
“Since de disgrace ob Edna dat scarcely s’prisin’,” Mr. Mouth made answer, easing a little the napkin at his neck.
“She is her own woman, me deah sah, an’Icannot prevent it!”
In the convival ground-floor dining-room of an imprecise style, it was hard, at times, to endure such second-rate company, as that of a querulous husband.
Yes, marriage had its dull side, and itsdrawbacks; still, where would society be (and where morality!) without the married women?
Mrs. Mouth fetched a sigh.
Just at her husband’s back, above the ebony sideboard, hung a Biblical engraving after Rembrandt,Woman Taken in Adultery, the conception of which seemed to her exaggerated and overdone, knowing full well, from previous experience, that there need not, really, be so much fuss.... Indeed, there need not be any: but to beTakenlike that! A couple of idiots.
“W’en I look at our chillen’s chairs, an’ all ob dem empty, in my opinion, we both betteh deaded,” Mr. Mouth brokenly said.
“I dare say dair are dose dat may t’ink so,” Mrs. Mouth returned, refilling her glass; “but, Prancing Nigger, I am not like dat; no, sah!”
“Where’s Charlie?”
“I s’poge he choose to dine at de lil Cantonese restaurant on de quay,” she murmured, setting down her glass with a slight grimace: howordinairethis cheapred wine! Doubtless Edna was lapping the wines of paradise! Respectability had its trials....
“Dis jelly mo’ like lemon squash,” Mr. Mouth commented.
“’Cos dat lil liard Ibum, he again forget de ice! Howebber, I hope soon to get rid ob him: for de insolence ob his bombax is more dan I can stand,” Mrs. Mouth declared, lifting her voice on account of a piano-organ in the street just outside.
“I s’poge to-day Chuesd’y? It was a-Chuesd’y—God forgib dat po’ frail chile.”
“Prancing Nigger, I allow Edna some young yet for dat position; I allow dat to be de matteh ob de case but, me good sah! Bery likely she marry him later.”
“Pah.”
“An’, why not?”
“Chooh, nebba!”
“Prancing Nigger, you seem to forget dat your elder daughter was a babe ob four, w’en I put on me nuptial arrange blastams to go to de Church.”
“Sh’o, I wonder you care to talk ob it!”
“An’, to-day, honey, as I sat in de Cathedral, lis’nin’ to de Archbishop, I seemed to see Edna, an’ she all indentellessochic, comin’ up de aisle, followed by twelve maids, all ob good blood, holdin’ flowehs an’ wid hats kimpoged ob feddehs—worn raddeh to de side, an’ I heah a stranger say: ‘Excuse me, sah, but who dis fine marriage?’ an’ a voice make reply: ‘Why, dat Mr. Ruiz de milliona’r-’r-’r’,’ an’ as he speak, one ob dese Italians from de Opera-house, commence to sing, ‘De voice dat brieved o’er Eden,’ an’ Edna she blow a kiss at me an’ laugh dat arch.”
“Nebba!”
“Prancing Nigger, ‘wait an’ see’!” Mrs. Mouth waved prophetically her fan.
“No, nebba,” he repeated, his head sunk low in chagrin.
“How you know, sah?” she queried, rising to throw a crust of loaf to the organ man outside.
The wind with the night had risen, and a cloud of blown dust was circling before the gate.
“See de raindrops, deah; here come at last de big rain.”
“....”
“Prancing Nigger!”
“Ah’m thinkin’.”
Improvising at the piano, Piltzenhoffer, kiddy-grand, he was contented, happy. The creative fertility, bursting from a radiant heart, more than ordinary surprised him: “My most quickening affair, since—” he groped, smiling a little at several particular wraiths, more, or less, bizarre, that, in their time, had especially disturbed him. “Yes; probably!” he murmured, enigmatically, striking an intricate, virile chord.
“Forgib me, dearest! I was wid de manicu’ of de fingeh-nails.”
“Divine one.”
She stood before him.
Hovering there between self-importance and madcapery, she was exquisite quite.
“All temperament ...!” he murmured,capturing her deftly between his knees.
She was wearing a toilette of whitecrêpe de chine, and a large favour of bright purple Costa-Rica roses.
“Soon as de sun drop, dey set out, deah: so de manicu’ say.”
“What shall we do till then?”
“... or, de pistols!” she fluted, encircling an arm about his neck.
“Destructive kitten,” he murmured, kissing, one by one, her red, polished nails.
“Honey! Come on.”
He frowned.
It seemed a treason almost to his last mistress, an exotic English girl, perpetually shivering, even in the sun, this revolver practice on the empty Quinine-bottles she had left behind. Poor Meraude. It was touching what faith she had had in a dose of quinine! Unquestionably she had been faithful tothat. And, dull enough, too, it had made her. With her albums of photographs, nearly all of midshipmen, how insufferably had she bored him:—“Thisone, darling, tell me, isn’t he—I, really—he makes me—and this one, darling! An Athenian viking, with hair like mimosa, and what ravishing hands!—oh my God!—I declare—he makes me—” Poor Meraude; she had been extravagant as well.
“Come on, an’ break some bokkles!”
“There’s not a cartridge left,” he told her, setting her on his knee.
“Ha-ha! Oh, hi-hi!Not a light;Not a bite!What a Saturday Night!”
“Ha-ha! Oh, hi-hi!Not a light;Not a bite!What a Saturday Night!”
“Ha-ha! Oh, hi-hi!Not a light;Not a bite!What a Saturday Night!”
“Ha-ha! Oh, hi-hi!
Not a light;
Not a bite!
What a Saturday Night!”
she trilled, taking off a comedian from the Eden Garden.
Like all other negresses she possessed a natural bent for mimicry, and a voice of that lisping quality that would find complete expression in songs such as: Have you seen my sweet garden ob Flowehs? Sst! Come closter, Listen heah, Lead me to the Altar, Dearest, and His Little Pink, proud, Spitting-lips are Mine.
“What is that you’re wearing?”
“A souvenir ob to-day; I buy it fo’ Luck,” she rippled, displaying a black briar cross pinned to her breast.
“I hope it’s blessed?”
“De nun dat sold it, didn’t say: Sh’o, its dreadful to t’ink ob po’ Mimi, an’ she soon a pilgrim all in blistehs an’ rags,” she commented, as a page boy with bejasmined ears appeared at the door.
“Me excuse....”
“How dare you come in, lil saucebox, widdout knockin’?”
“Excuse, missey, but....”
“What?”
Ibum hung his head.
“I only thoughted, it bein’ Crucifix day, I would like to follow in de procession thu de town.”
“Bery well: but be back in time fo’ dinner.”
“T’ank you, missey.”
“An’ mind fo’ once you are!”
“Yes, missey,” the niggerling acquiesced, bestowing a slow smile on Snob and Snowball, who had accompanied him into theroom. Easy of habit, as tropical animals are apt to be, it was apparent that the aristocratic pomeranian was paying sentimental court to the skittish mouser, who, since her περιπἑτεια of black kittens looked ready for anything.
“Sh’o, but she hab a way wid her!” Ibum remarked, impressed.
“Lil monster, take dem both, an’ den get out ob my sight,” his mistress directed him.
Fingering a battered volume, that bore the book-plate of Meraude, Vittorio appeared absorbed.
“Honey.”
“Well?”
“Noddin’.”
In the silence of the room a restless bluebottle, attracted by the wicked leer of a chandelier, tied up incredibly in a bright green net, blended its hum with the awakening murmur of the streets.
“Po’ Mimi. I hope she look up as she go by.”
“Yes, by Jove.”
“Doh after de rude t’ings she say tome—” she broke off, blinking a little at the sunlight through the thrilling shutters.
“If I remember, beloved, you were both equally candid,” he remarked, wandering out upon the balcony.
It was on the palm-grown Messalina, an avenue that comprised a solid portion of the Ruiz estate, that he had installed her, in a many-storied building, let out in offices and flats.
Little gold, blue, lazy and romantic Cuna, what chastened mood broods over thy life to-day?
“Have you your crucifix? Won’t you buy a cross?” persuasive, feminine voices rose up from the pavement below. Active again with the waning sun, “workers,” with replenished wares, were emerging forth from their respective depots nursing small lugubrious baskets.
“Have you bought your cross?” The demand, when softly cooed, by some solicitous patrician, almost compelled an answer; and most of the social world of Cuna appeared to be vending crosses, or “Pilgrims’medals” in imitation “bronze,” this afternoon upon the kerb. At the corner of Valdez Street, across the way, Countess Kattie Taosay (néeSoderini), austere in black with Parma violets, was presiding over a depot festooned with nothing but rosaries, that “professed” themselves, as they hung, to the suave trade wind.
“Not a light:Not a bite!What a——”
“Not a light:Not a bite!What a——”
“Not a light:Not a bite!What a——”
“Not a light:
Not a bite!
What a——”
Edna softly hummed, shading her eyes with a big feather fan.
It was an evening of cloudless radiance; sweet and mellow as is frequent at the close of summer.
“Oh, ki, honey! It so cleah, I can see de lil iluns ob yalleh sand, far away b’yond de Point.”
“Dearest!” he inattentively murmured, recognizing on the Avenue the elegant cobweb wheels of his mother’s Bolivian buggy.
Accompanied by Eurydice Edwards, she was driving her favourite mules.
“An’ de shipwreck off de coral reef, oh, ki!”
“Let me find you the long-glass, dear,” he said, glad for an instant to step inside.
Leaning with one foot thrust nimbly out through the balcony-rails towards the street, she gazed absorbed.
Delegates of agricultural guilds bearing banners, making for the Cathedral square (the pilgrims’ starting-point), were advancing along the avenue amidst applause: fruit-growers, rubber-growers, sugar-growers, opium-growers all doubtless wishful of placating Nature that redoubtable Goddess, by showing a little honour to the Church. “Oh Lord,notas Sodom,” she murmured, deciphering a text attached to the windscreen of a luxurious automobile.
“Divine one, here they are.”
“T’anks, honey, I see best widdout,” she replied, following the Bacchic progress of two girls in soldiers’ forage-caps, who were exciting the gaiety of the throng.
“Be careful, kid; don’t lean too far....”
“Oh, ki, if dey don’t exchange kisses!”
But the appearance of the Cunan Constabulary, handsome youngsters, looking the apotheosis themselves of earthly lawlessness, in their feathered sun-hats and bouncing kilts, created a diversion.
“De way dey stare up; I goin’ to put on a tiara!”
“Wait, do, till supper,” he entreated, manipulating the long-glass to suit his eye.
Driving or on foot, were the usual faces.
Seated on a doorstep, Miss Maxine Bush, the famous actress, appeared to be rehearsing a smart society rôle, as she flapped the air with a sheet of street-fowl paper, while, rattling a money-box, her tame monkey, “Jutland-ho,” came as prompt for a coin as any demned Duchess.
“Ha-ha, Oh, hi-hi!” Edna’s blasted catches: “Bless her,” he exclaimed, relevelling the glass. Perfect. Good lenses these; one could even read a physician’s doorplate across the way: “Hours 2-4, Agony guaranteed”—obviously, a dentist, and the window-card too, above, “Miss—?Miss—? Miss—?—Speciality: Men past thirty.”
Four years to wait. Patience.
Ooof! There went “Alice” and one of her boys. Bad days for the ballet! People afraid of the Opera-house ... that chandelier ... and the pictures on the roof.... And wasn’t that little Lady Bird? Running at all the trousers: “haveyou your crucifix!...??”
“Honey....”
She had set a crown of moonstones on her head, and had moonstone bracelets on her arms.
“My queen.”
“I hope Mimi look up at me!”
“Vain one.”
Over the glistering city the shadows were falling, staining the white-walled houses here and there as with some purple pigment.
“Accordin’ to de lates’ ’ticklers, de Procession follow de Paseo only as far as de fountain.”
“Oh....”
“Where it turn up thu Carmen Street, into de Avenue Messalina.”
Upon the metallic sheen of the evening sky she sketched the itinerary lightly with her fan.
And smiling down on her uplifted face, he asked himself whimsically how long he would love her. She had not the brains poor child, of course, to keep a man for ever. Heigho. Life indeed was often hard....
“Honey, here dey come!”
A growing murmur of distant voices, jointly singing, filled liturgically the air, together as the warning salute, fired at sundown, from the fort heights, above the town, reverberated sadly.
“Oh, la, la,” she laughed, following the wheeling flight of some birds that rose startled from the palms.
“The Angelus....”
“Hark, honey: what is dat dey singin’?”
A thousand ages in Thy sightAre like an evening gone,Short as the watch that ends the nightBefore the rising sun.
A thousand ages in Thy sightAre like an evening gone,Short as the watch that ends the nightBefore the rising sun.
A thousand ages in Thy sightAre like an evening gone,Short as the watch that ends the nightBefore the rising sun.
A thousand ages in Thy sight
Are like an evening gone,
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.
Led by an old negress leaning on her hickory staff, the procession came.
Banners, banners, banners.
“I hope Mimi wave!”
Floating banners against the dusk....
“Oh, honey! See dat lil pilgrim-boy?”
Time like an ever-rolling stream,Bears all its sons away;They fly forgotten, as a dreamDies at the opening day.
Time like an ever-rolling stream,Bears all its sons away;They fly forgotten, as a dreamDies at the opening day.
Time like an ever-rolling stream,Bears all its sons away;They fly forgotten, as a dreamDies at the opening day.
Time like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.
“Mimi, Mimi!” She had flung the roses from her dress: “Look up, my deah, look up.”
But her cry escaped unheard.
They fly forgotten, as a dreamDies——
They fly forgotten, as a dreamDies——
They fly forgotten, as a dreamDies——
They fly forgotten, as a dream
Dies——
The echoing voices of those behind lingered a little.
“Edna.”
She was crying.
“It noddin’; noddin’, at all! But it plain she refuse to forgib me!”
“Never.”
“Perspirin’, an’ her skirt draggin’, sh’o, she looked a fright.”
He smiled: for indeed already the world was perceptibly moulding her....
“Enuff to scare ebbery crow off de savannah!”
“And wouldn’t the Farmers bless her.”
“Oh, honey!” Her glance embraced the long, lamp-lit avenue with suppressed delight.
“Well.”
“Dair’s a new dancer at de Apollo tonight. Suppose we go?”
Havana—Bordighera.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAINBY UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITEDPRINTERS, LONDON AND WOKING
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAINBY UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITEDPRINTERS, LONDON AND WOKING