Sorrow in Sunlight
Page 6
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 sooner dan wid de crocodile, which is some consolation for dose dat remain to mourn.”
“Sh’o, it bring not an atom 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 dad 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’ I cannot prevent it!”
In the convivial 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 its drawbacks; 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, of the 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 be Taken like 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: how ordinaire this cheap red 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 cat in de Cathedral, lis’nin’ to de Archbishop, I seemed to see Edna, an’ she all in dentelles so chic, 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, nebbah,” 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; her come at last de big rain.”
“…”
“Prancing Nigger!”
“Ah’m thinkin’.”
XIV
Improvising at the piano, Piltzenhoffer, kiddy-grand, he was contented, happy. The creative fertility, bursting from a radiant heart, more than ordinarily 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’ ob 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 white crêpe 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 in a dose of quinine! Unquestionably she had been faithful to that. And, dull enough, too, it had made her. With her albums of photographs, nearly all of midshipmen, how insufferably had she bored him:—”This one, 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!”
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 closer, 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, it’s 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’?”
“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: b
ut 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 the room. 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 peripeteia 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 to me—” 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 Katty Taosay (née Soderini), 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——”
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, recognising 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. “O Lord, not as 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-foul 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, re-levelling the glass. Perfect. Good lenses these; one could even read a physician’s doorplate across they way: “Hours 2-4, Agony guaranteed”—obviously, a dentist; and the window-card, too, above, “Miss—? Miss—? Specialty: 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: “have you 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’ ’tickler, 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, just as the warning salute, fired at sundown from the heights of the fort above the town, reverberated sadly.
“Oh, la, la,” she laughed, following the wheeling flight of some birds that rose started from the palms.
“The Angelus…”
“Hark, honey: what is dat dey singin’?”
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 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 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 to-night. Suppose we go?”
Havana—Bordighera.
The End
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Date:
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