“Silver bean-stalks, silver bean-stalks, oh hé, oh hé,” down the long
village street from door to door, the cry repeatedly came, until the
vendor’s voice was lost on the evening air.
In a rocking chair, before the threshold of a palm-thatched cabin, a
matron with broad, bland features, and a big untidy figure, surveyed
the scene with a nonchalant eye.
Beneath some tall trees, bearing flowers like flaming bells, a few
staid villagers sat enjoying the rosy dusk, while, strolling towards
the sea, two young men passed by with fingers intermingled.
With a slight shrug, the lady plied her fan.
As the Mother of a pair of oncoming girls, the number of ineligible
young men, or confirmed _bachelors_ around the neighbourhood was a
constant source of irritation....
“Sh’o, dis remoteness bore an’ weary me to death,” she exclaimed,
addressing someone through the window behind; and receiving no audible
answer, she presently rose, and went within.
It was the hour when, fortified by a siesta, Mrs. Ahmadou Mouth was
wont to approach her husband on general household affairs, and to
discuss, in particular, the question of their removal to the town;
for, with the celebration of their Pearl-wedding, close at hand, the
opportunity to make the announcement of a change of residence to their
guests, ought not, she believed, to be missed.
“We leave Mediavilla for de education ob my daughters,” she would say;
or, perhaps: “We go to Cuna-Cuna for de finishing ob _mes filles_!”
But, unfortunately, the reluctance of Mr. Mouth to forsake his Home
seemed to increase from day to day.
She found him asleep, bolt upright, his head gently nodding, beneath a
straw-hat beautifully browned.
“Say, nigger, lub,” she murmured, brushing her hand featheringly along
his knee, “say, nigger, lub, I gotta go!”
It was the tender prelude to the storm.
Evasive (and but half-awake), he warned her. “Let me alone; Ah’m
thinkin’.”
“Prancing Nigger, now come on!”
“Ah’m thinkin’.”
“Tell me what for dis procrastination?” Exasperated, she gripped his
arm.
But for all reply, Mr. Mouth drew a volume of revival hymns towards
him, and turned on his wife his back.
“You ought to shame o’ you-self, sh’o,” she caustically commented,
crossing to the window.
The wafted odours of the cotton-trees without, oppressed the air. In
the deepening twilight, the rising moonmist, already obscured the
street.
“Dis place not healthy. Dat damp! Should my daughters go off into a
decline ...” she apprehensively murmured, as her husband started
softly to sing.
“For ebber wid de Lord!
Amen; so let it be;
Life from de dead is in dat word,
’Tis immortality.”
“If it’s de meeting-house dats de obstruction, dair are odders, too, in
Cuna-Cuna,” she observed.
“How often hab I bid you nebba to mention dat modern Sodom in de
hearing ob my presence!”
“De Debil frequent de village, fo’ dat matter, besides de town.”
“Sh’o nuff.”
“But yestiddy, dat po’ silly negress Ottalie was seduced again in a
Mango track--; an’ dats de third time!”
“Heah in de body pent,
Absent from Him I roam,
Yet nightly pitch my movin’ tent
A day’s march nearer home.”
“Prancing Nigger, from dis indifference to your fambly, be careful lest
you do arouse de vials ob de Lord’s wrath!”
“Yet nightly pitch--” he was beginning again, in a more subdued key,
but the tones of his wife arrested him.
“Prancing Nigger, lemme say sumptin’ more!” Mrs. Mouth took a long
sighing breath: “In dis dark jungle my lil jewel Edna, I feah, will
wilt away....”
“Wh’a gib you cause to speak like dat?”
“I was tellin’ my fortune lately wid de cards,” she reticently made
reply, insinuating, by her half-turned eyes, that more disclosures
of an ominous nature concerning others besides her daughter had been
revealed to her as well.
“Lordey Lord; what is it den you want?”
“I want a Villa with a watercloset--” flinging wiles to the winds, it
was a cry from the heart.
“De Lord hab pity on dese vanities an’ innovations!”
“In town, you must rememba, often de houses are far away from de
parks;--de city, in dat respect, not like heah.”
“Say nothin’ more! De widow ob my po’ brudder Willie, across de glen,
she warn me I ought nebba to listen to you.”
“Who care for a common woman, dat only read de _Negro World_, an’ nebba
see anyt’ing else!” she swelled.
Mr. Mouth turned conciliatingly.
“To-morrow me arrange for de victuals for our ebenin’ at Home!”
“Good, bery fine,” she murmured, acknowledging through the window
the cordial “good-night” of a few late labourers, returning from the
fields, each with a bundle of sugar-cane poised upon the head.
“As soon as marnin’ dawn me take dis bizniz in hand.”
“Only pramas, nigger darlin’,” she cajoled, “dat durin’ de course of de
reception you make a lil speech to inform de neighbours ob our gwine
away bery soon, for de sake of de education ob our girls.”
“Ah cyan pramas nothin’.”
“I could do wid a change too, honey, after my last miscarriage.”
“Change come wid our dissolution,” he assured her, “quite soon enuff!”
“Bah,” she murmured, rubbing her cheek to his: “we set out on our
journey sh’o in de season ob Novemba.”
To which with asperity he replied: “_Not for two Revolutions!_” and
rising brusquely, strode solemnly from the room.
“Hey-ho-day,” she yawned, starting a wheezy gramophone, and sinking
down upon his empty chair; and she was lost in ball-room fancies
(whirling in the arms of some blonde young foreigner), when she caught
sight of her daughter’s reflection in the glass.
Having broken, or discarded her girdle of leaves, Miss Miami Mouth,
attracted by the gramophone, appeared to be teaching a hectic two-step
to the cat.
“Fie, fie, my lass. Why you be so _Indian_?” her mother exclaimed,
bestowing, with the full force of a carpet-slipper, a well-aimed spank
from behind.
“_Aïe, aïe!_”
“Sh’o: you nohow select!”
“_Aïe_....”
“De low exhibition!”
“I had to take off my apron, ’cos it seemed to draw de bees,” Miami
tearfully explained, catching up the cat in her arms.
“Ob course, if you choose to wear roses....”
“It was but ivy!”
“De berries ob de ivy, entice de same,” Mrs. Mouth replied, nodding
graciously, from the window, to Papy Paul, the next-door neighbour, who
appeared to be taking a lonely stroll with a lanthorn and a pineapple.
“I dats way wondering why Bamboo, no pass, dis ebenin’, too; as a rule,
it is seldom he stop so late out upon de sea,” the young girl ventured.
“After I shall introduce you to de world (de advantage ob a good
marriage; when I t’ink ob mine!), you will be ashamed, sh’o, to recall
dis infatuation.”
“De young men ob Cuna-Cuna (tell me, Mammee), are dey den so nice?”
“Ah, Chile! If I was your age again....”
“Sh’o, dair’s nothin’ so much in dat.”
“As a young girl of eight (Tee-hee!), I was distracting to all the
gentlemen,” Mrs. Mouth asserted, confiding a smile to a small,
long-billed bird, in a cage, of the variety known as Bequia-Sweet.
“How I wish I’d been born, like you, in August-Town, across de Isthmus!”
“It gib me dis taste fo’ S’ciety, Chile.”
“In S’ciety, don’ dey dress wid clothes on ebery day?”
“Sh’o; surtainly.”
“An’ don’t dey nebba tickle?”
“In August-Town, de aristocracy conceal de best part ob deir bodies;
not like heah!”
“An’ tell me, Mammee...? De first lover you eber had ... was he half
as handsome as Bamboo?”
“De first dude, Chile, I eber had, was a lil, lil buoy, ... wid no hair
(whatsoeber at all), bal’ like a calabash!” Mrs. Mouth replied, as her
daughter Edna entered with the lamp.
“Frtt!” the wild thing tittered, setting it down with a bang: with her
cincture of leaves and flowers, she had the éclat of a butterfly.
“Better fetch de shade,” Mrs. Mouth exclaimed, staring squeamishly at
Miami’s shadow on the wall.
“Already it grow dark; no one about now at dis hour ob night at all.”
“Except thieves an’ ghouls,” Mrs. Mouth replied, her glance straying
towards the window.
But only the little blue-winged Bats were passing beneath a fairyland
of stars.
“When I do dis, or dis, my shadow appear as formed as Mimi’s!”
“Sh’o, Edna, she dat provocative to-day.”
“Be off at once, Chile, an’ lay de table for de ebenin’ meal; an’ be
careful not to knock de shine off de new tin-teacups,” Mrs. Mouth
commanded, taking up an Estate-Agent’s catalogue, and seating herself
comfortably beneath the lamp.
“‘City of Cuna-Cuna,’” she read, “‘_in the Heart of a Brainy District_
(within easy reach of University, shops, etc.). A charming, Freehold
Villa. Main drainage. Extensive views. Electric light. Every
convenience.’”
“Dat sound just de sort ob lil shack for me.”