When he raised his face it was towards a sky all primrose and silver pink. Sunk deep in his dew-laved bower, it was sweet to behold the light. Above him great spikes of blossom were stirring in the idle wind, while birds were chaunting voluntaries among the palms. And in thanksgiving, too, arose the matin bells. From Our Lady of the Pillar, from the church of La Favavoa in the West, from Saint Sebastian, from Our Lady of the Sea, from Our Lady of Mount Carmel, from Santa Theresa, from Saint Francis of the Poor.
XII
But although by the grace of Providence the city of Cuna-Cuna had been spared, other parts of the island had sustained irremediable loss. In the Province of Casuby, beyond the May Day Mountains, many a fair banana or sugar estate had been pitifully wrecked, yet what caused perhaps the widest regret among the Cucan public was the destruction of the famous convent of Sasabonsam. One of the beauties of the island, one of the gems of tropic architecture, celebrated, made immortal (in The Picnic) by the Poet Marcella, had disappeared. A Relief fund for those afflicted had at once been started, and, as if this were not enough, the doors of the Villa Alba were about to be thrown open for “An Evening of Song and Gala” in the causes of charity.
“Prancing Nigger, dis an event to take exvantage ob; dis not a lil t’ing, love, to be sneezed at at all,” Mrs. Mouth eagerly said upon hearing the news, and she had gone about ever since, reciting the names in the list of Patronesses, including that of the Cucan Archbishop.
It was the auspicious evening.
In their commodious, jointly shared bedroom, the Miss Lips, the fair Lips, the smiling Leps were maiding one another in what they both considered to be the “Parisian way”; a way, it appeared, that involved much nudging, arch laughter, and, even, some prodding.
“In love? Up to my ankles! Oh, yes.” Edna blithely chuckled.
“Up to your topknot!” her sister returned, making as if to pull it.
But with the butt end of the curling-tongs Edna waved her away.
Since her visit to the Villa Alba “me, an’ Misteh Ruiz” was all her talk, and to be his reigning mistress the summit of her dreams.
“Come on, man, wid dose tongs; ’cos I want ’em myself,” Miami murmured, pinning a knot of the sweet night jasmine deftly above her ear.
Its aroma evoked Bamboo.
Oh, why had he not joined her? Why did he delay? Had he forgotten their delight among the trees, the giant silk-cotton-trees, with the hammer-tree-frogs chanting in the dark: Rig-a-jig-jig, rig-a-jig-jig?
“Which do you like de best, man, dis lil necklash or de odder?” Edna asked, essaying a strand of orchid-tinted beads about her throat.
“I’d wear dem both,” her sister advised.
“I t’ink, on de whole, I wear de odder; de one he gib me de time he take exvantage ob my innocence.”
“Since dose imitation pearls, honey,—he gib you anyt’ing else?”
“No; but he dat generous! He say he mean to make me a lil pickney gal darter: an’, oh, won’t dat be day,” Edna fluted, breaking off at the sound of her mother’s voice in the corridor.
“…an tell de cabman to take de fly-bonnets off de horses,” she was instructing Ibum as she entered the room.
She had a gown of the new mignonette satin, with “episcopal” sleeves lined with red.
“Come, girls, de cab is waiting; but perhaps you no savey dat.”
They didn’t; and, for some time, dire was the confusion.
In the Peacock drawing room of the Villa Alba the stirring ballet music from Isfahan filled the vast room with its thrilling madness. Upon a raised estrade, a corps of dancing boys, from Sankor, glided amid a murmur of applause.
The combination of charity and amusement had brought together a crowded and cosmopolitan assembly and, early though it was, it was evident already that with many more new adverts there would be a shortage of chairs. From their yachts had come several distinguished birds of passage, exhaling an atmosphere of Paris and Park Lane.
Wielding a heavy bouquet of black feathers, Madame Ruiz, robed in a gown of malmaison cloth-of-silver, watched the dancers from an alcove by the door.
Their swaying torsos, and weaving gliding feet, fettered with chains of orchids and hung with bells, held a fascination for her.
“My dear, they beat the Hodeidahs! I’m sure I never saw anything like it,” the Duchess of Wellclose remarked admiringly: “that little one, Fred,” she murmured, turning towards the Duke.
A piece of praise a staid small body in a demure lace cap chanced to hear.
This was “the incomparable” Miss McAdam, the veteran ballet mistress of the Opera-house, and inventrix of the dance. Born in the frigid High Street of Aberdeen, “Alice,” as she was universally known among enthusiastic patrons of the ballet, had come originally to the tropics as companion to a widowed clergyman, when, as she would relate (in her picturesque, native brogue), at the sight of Nature her soul had awoke. Self-expression had come with a rush; and, now that she was ballet mistress of the Cunan opera, some of the daring ensembles of the Scottish spinster would embarrass even the good Cunans themselves.
“I’ve warned the lads,” she whispered to Madame Ruiz, “to cut their final figure on account of the Archbishop. But young boys are so excitable, and I expect they’ll forget!”
Gazing on their perfect backs, Madame Ruiz could not but mourn the fate of the Painter, who, like Dalou, had specialized almost exclusively on this aspect of the human form; for, alas, that admirable Arist had been claimed by the Quake; and although his portrait of Madame Ruiz remained unfinished… there was still a mole, nevertheless, in gratitude, and as a mark of respect she had sent her Rolls car to the Mass in honor of his obsequies, with the crêpe off an old black dinner-dress tied across the lamps.
“I see they’re going to,” Miss McAdam murmured, craning a little to focus the Archbishop, then descanting to two ladies with deep purple fans.
“Ah, well! It’s what they do in Isfahan,” Madame Ruiz commented, turning to greet her neighbour Lady Bird.
“Am I late for Gebhardt?” she asked, as if Life itself hinged upon the reply.
A quite silly woman, Madame Ruiz was often obliged to lament the absence of intellect at her door: accounting for it as the consequence of a weakness for negroes, combined with a hopeless passion for the Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford.
But the strident cries of the dancers and the increasing volume of the music discouraged all talk, though ladies with collection-boxes (biding their time) were beginning furtively to select their next quarry.
Countess Katty Taosay, née Soderini, a little woman and sure of the giants, could feel in her psychic veins which men were most likely to empty their pockets: English Consul… pale and interesting, he would not refuse to stoop and fumble, nor Follinsbe “Peter,” the slender husband of a fashionable wife, nor Charlie Campfire, a young boy like an injured camel, heir to vast banana estates, the darling, and six foot high if an inch.
“Why do big men like little women?” she wondered, waving a fan powdered with blue paillettes: and she was still casting about for a reason when the hectic music stopped.
And now the room echoed briefly with applause, while admiration was divided between the super-excellence of the dancers and the living beauty of the rugs which their feet had trod—rare rugs from Bokhara-i-Shareef, and Kairouan-city-of-Prayer, lent by the mistress of the house.
Entering on the last hand-clap, Mr. and Mrs. Mouth, followed by their daughters, felt, each in their several ways, they might expect to enjoy themselves.
“Prancing Nigger, what a furore!” Mrs. Mouth exclaimed. “You b’lieb, I hope, now, dat our tickets was worth de money.”
Plucking at the swallow-tails of an evening “West-End,” Mr. Mouth was disinclined to re-open a threadbare topic.
“It queah how few neegah dair be,” he observed, scanning the brilliant audience, many of whom, taking advantage of an interval, were flocking towards a buffet in an adjoining conservatory.
&nb
sp; “Prancing Nigger, I feel I could do wid a glass of champagne.”
Passing across a corridor, it would have been interesting to have explored the spacious vistas that loomed beyond. “Dat must be one ob de priveys,” Edna murmured, pointing to a distant door.
“Seben, Chile, did you say?”
“If not more!”
“She seem fond ob flowehs,” Mr. Mouth commented, pausing to notice the various plants that lined the way: from the roof swung showery azure flowers that commingled with the theatrically-hued cañas, set out in crude, bold, colour-schemes below, that looked best at night. But in their malignant splendour the orchids were the thing. Mrs. Abernathy, Ronald Firbank (a dingy lilac blossom of rarity untold), Prince Palairet, a heavy blue-spotted flower, and rosy Olive Moonlight, were those that claimed the greatest respect from a few discerning connoisseurs.
“Prancing Nigger, you got a chalk mark on your ‘West-End.’ Come heah, sah, an’ let me brush it.”
Hopeful of glimpsing Vittorio, Miami and Edna sauntered on. With arms loosely entwined about each other’s hips, they made, in their complete insouciance, a conspicuous couple.
“I’d give sumpin’ to see de bedrooms, man, ’cos dair are chapels, an’ barf-rooms, beside odder conveniences off dem,” Edna related, returning a virulent glance from Miss Eurydice Edwards with a contemptuous, pitying smile.
Traversing a throng, sampling sorbets and ices, the sisters strolled out upon the lawn.
The big silver stars, how clear they shone—infinitudes, infinitudes.
“Adieu, hydrangeas, adieu, blue, burning South!”
The concert, it seemed, had begun.
“Come chillens, come!”
In the vast drawing-room the first novelty of the evening—an aria from Sumaïa—had stilled all chatter. Deep-sweet, poignant, the singer’s voice was conjuring Sumaïa’s farewell to the Greek isle of Mitylene, bidding farewell to its gracious women, and to the trees of white or turquoise in the gardens of Lesbos.
“Adieu, hydrangeas—”
Hardly a suitable moment, perhaps, to dispute a chair. But neither the Duchess of Wellclose nor Mrs. Mouth were creatures easily abashed.
“I pay, an’ I mean to hab it.”
“You can’t; it’s taken!” the duchess returned, nodding meaningly towards the buffet, where the duke could be seen swizzling whisky at the back of the bar.
“Sh’o! Dese white women seem to t’ink dey can hab ebberyt’ing.”
“Taken,” the duchess repeated, who disliked what she called the parfum d’Afrique of the “sooties,” and, as though to intimidate Mrs. Mouth, she gave her a look that would have made many a Peeress in London quail.
Nevertheless, in the stir that followed the song chairs were forthcoming.
“From de complexion dat female hab, she look as doh she bin boiling bananas!” Mrs. Mouth commented comfortably, loud enough for the duchess to hear.
“Such a large congregation should su’tinly assist de fund!” Mr. Mouth resourcefully said, envisaging with interest the audience; it was not every day that one could feast the gaze on the noble baldness of the Archbishop, or on the subtle silhouette of Miss Maxine Bush, swathed like an idol in an Egyptian tissue woven with magical eyes.
“De woman in de window dah,” Mrs. Mouth remarked, indicating a dowager who had the hard but resigned look of the mother of six daughters in immediate succession, “hab a look, Prancing Nigger, ob your favourite statesman.”
“De immortal Wilberforce!”
“I s’poge it’s de whiskers,” Mrs. Mouth replied, ruffling gently her “Borgia” sleeves for the benefit of the Archbishop. Rumour had it he was fond of negresses, and that the black private secretary he employed was his own natural son, while some suspected indeed a less natural connexion.
But Madame Hatso (of Blue Brazil, the Argentine; those nights in Venezuela and Buenos Ayres, “bis” and “bravas”! How the public had roared) was curtseying right and left, and Mrs. Mouth, glancing round to address her daughters, perceived with vexation that Edna had vanished.
In the garden he caught her to him.
“Flower of the Sugar Cane!”
“Misteh Ruiz…”
“Exquisite kid.”
“I saw you thu de window-glass all de time, an’ dair was I! laughing so silent-ly…”
“My little honey.”
“…no; ’cos ob de neighbehs,” she fluted, drawing him beneath the great flamboyants that stood like temples of darkness all around.
“Sweetheart.”
“I ’clar to grashis!” she delightedly crooned as he gathered her up in his arms.
My little Edna…?…?…?”
“Where you goin’ wid me to?”
“There,” and he nodded towards the white sea sand.
A yawning butler, an insolent footman, a snoring coachman, a drooping horse…
The last conveyance had driven away, and only a party of “b—d—y niggers,” supposed to be waiting for a daughter, was keeping the domestics from their beds.
Ernest, the bepowdered footman, believed them to be thieves, and could have sworn he saw a tablespoon in the old coon’s pocket.
Hardly able to restrain his tears, Mr. Mouth sat gazing vacuously at the floor.
“Wha’ can keep de chile?… O Lord… I hope dair noddin’ wrong.”
“On such a lovely ebenin’ what is time?” Mrs. Mouth exclaimed, taking up an attitude of night-enchantment by the open door.
A remark that caused the butler and his subordinate to cough.
“It not often see de cosmos look so special!”
“Ef she not heah soon, we better go widout her,” Miami murmured, who was examining the visitors’ cards on the hall table undismayed by the eye of Ernest.
“It’s odd she should so procrastinate; but la jeunesse, c’est le temps où l’on s’amuse,” Mrs. Mouth blandly declared, seating herself tranquilly by her husband’s side.
“Dair noddin’, I hope, de matteh…”
“Eh, suz, my deah! Eh, suz.” Reassuringly, she tapped his arm.
“Sir Victor Virtue, Lady Bird, Princess Altamisal,” Miami tossed the cards.
“Sh’o it was a charming ebenin’! Doh I was sorry for de duchess, wid de duke, an’ he all nasty drunk wid spirits.”
“I s’poge she use to it.”
“It was a perfect skangle! Howebber, on de whole, it was quite an enjoyable pahty—do dat music ob Wagner, it gib me de retches.”
“It bore me, too,” Miami confessed, as a couple of underfootmen made their appearance and, joining their fidgeting colleagues by the door, waited for the last guests to depart, in a mocking, whispering group.
“Ef she not here bery soon,” Miami murmured, vexed by the servants’ impertinent smiles.
“Sh’o, she be here directly,” Mrs. Mouth returned, appraising through her fan-sticks the footmen’s calves.
“It daybreak already!” Miami yawned, moved to elfish mirth by the over-emphasis of rouge on her mother’s round cheeks.
But under the domestics’ mocking stare their talk at length was chilled to silence.
From the garden came the plaintive wheepling of a bird (intermingled with the coachman’s spasmodic snores), while above the 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.
XIII
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 may 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 care, 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, some two weeks later, she was reclining lifelessly across the bed, gazing at the sun-blots 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 pariah dog 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 bare-footed 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 joined them, 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…
Sorrow in Sunlight Page 5