It was the Feast night. In the grey spleen of evening through the dusty
lanes towards Mediavilla, county-society flocked.
Peering round a cow-shed door, Primrose and Phœbe, procured as
waitresses for the occasion, felt their valour ooze as they surveyed
the arriving guests, and dropping prostrate amid the straw, declared,
in each others arms, that never, never would they find the courage to
appear.
In the road, before a tall tamarind-tree, a well-spread supper board
exhaled a pungent odour of fried cascadura fish, exciting the plaintive
ravings of the wan pariah dogs, and the cries of a few little stark
naked children engaged as guardians to keep them away. Defying an
ancient and inelegant custom, by which the hosts welcomed their guests
by the side of the road, Mrs. Mouth had elected to remain within the
precincts of the house, where, according to tradition, the bridal
trophies--cowrie-shells, feathers, and a bouquet of faded orange
blossom--were being displayed.
“It seem no more dan yestidday,” she was holding forth gaily over a
goblet of Sangaree wine, “it seem no more dan yestidday dat I put on me
maiden wreath ob arange blastams to walk wid me nigger to church.”
Clad in rich-hued creepers, she was both looking and feeling her best.
“Sh’o,” a woman with blonde-dyed hair and Buddery eyes exclaimed,
“it seem no more dan just like yestidday; dat not so, Papy Paul?”
she queried, turning to an old man in a raspberry-pink kerchief, who
displayed (as he sat) more of his person than he seemed to be aware of.
But Papy Paul was confiding a receipt for pickling yuccas to Mamma
Luna, the mother of Bamboo, and made as if not to hear.
Offering a light, lilac wine, sweet and heady, Miami circled, here and
there. She had a cincture of white rose-oleanders, and a bandeau of
blue convolvoli. She held a fan.
“Or do you care for anyt’ing else?” she was enquiring, automatically,
of Mr. Musket (the Father of three very common girls), as a melodious
tinkle of strings announced the advent of the minstrels from Broken
Hill.
Following the exodus roadward, it was agreeable to reach the outer air.
Under the high trees by the yard-door gate, the array of vehicles and
browsing quadrupeds was almost as numerous as upon a Market day. Coming
and going between the little Café of the “Forty Parrots” (with its Bar,
spelled _Biar_ in twinkling lights), the quiet village road was agog,
with bustling folk, as perhaps never before. All iris in the dusk,
a few loosely-loinclothed young men, had commenced dancing aloofly
among themselves, bringing down some light (if bitter) banter from the
belles.
Pirouetting with these, Miami recognized the twinkling feet of her
brother Charlie, a lad who preferred roaming the wide savannah country
after butterflies with his net, to the ever-increasing etiquette of his
home.
“Sh’o, S’ciety no longer what it wa’,” the mother of two spare lean
girls, like young giraffes, was lamenting, when a clamorous gong
summoned the assembly to the festal board.
In the glow of blazing palm logs, stoked by capering pickneys, the
company, with some considerable jostling, become seated by degrees.
“Fo’ what we gwine to recebe, de Lord make us to be truly t’ankful,”
Mr. Mouth’s low voice was lost amid the din. Bending to the decree of
Providence, and trusting in God for the welfare of his house, he was
resigned to follow the call of duty, by allowing his offspring such
educational advantages and worldly polish that only a city can give.
“An’ so I heah you gwine to leab us!” the lady at his elbow exclaimed,
helping herself to a claw of a crab.
“Fo’ de sake ob de chillen’s schoolin’,” Mr. Mouth made reply, blinking
at the brisk lightning play through the foliage of the trees.
“Dey tell me de amount of licence dat go on ober dah,” she murmured,
indicating with her claw the chequered horizon, “but de whole world
needs revising, as de Missionary truly say!”
“Indeed, an’ dat’s de trute.”
“It made me cry,” a plump little woman declared, “when de Minister
speak so serious on de scandal ob close dancing....”
“Fo’ one t’ing lead sh’o to de nex’!” Mr. Mouth obstrusely assented,
turning his attention upon an old negress answering to the name of
Mamma May, who was retailing how she had obtained the sunshade, beneath
which, since noon, she had walked all the way to the party.
“Ah could not afford a parasol, so Ah just cut miself a lil green bush,
an’ held it up ober my head,” she was crooning in gleeful triumph.
“It’s a wonder, indeed, no one gib you a lif’!” several voices
observed, but the discussion was drowned by an esoteric song of remote,
tribal times from the lips of Papy Paul.
“_I am King Elephant-bag,_
_Ob de rose-pink Mountains!_
_Tatou, tatouay, tatou...._”
provoking a giggle from Miss Stella Spooner, the marvellous daughter
of an elderly father, and in which she was joined by the youngest Miss
Mouth.
Incontestably a budding Princess, the playful mite was enjoying, with
airy nonchalance, her initial experience of Society.
“Ob course she is very _jeune_,” Mrs. Mouth murmured archly, behind her
hand, into the ear of Mr. Musket.
“It’s de Lord’s will,” he cautiously replied, rolling a mystified eye
towards his wife (a sable negress out of Africa), continually vaunting
her foreign extraction: “I’m Irish,” she would say: “I’m Irish,
deah....”
“Sh’o she de born image ob her elder sister!”
“De world all say she to marry de son ob ole Mamma Luna, dat keep de
lil shop.”
“Suz! Wha’ nex’?” Mrs. Mouth returned, breaking off to focus Papy Paul,
apparently, already, far from sober: “I hav’ saw God, an’ I hav’ spoke
wid de President, too!” he was announcing impressively to Mamma Luna, a
little old woman in whose veins ran the blood of many races.
“Dair’s no trute at all in _dat_ report,” Mrs. Mouth quietly added,
signalling directions to a sturdy, round-bottomed little lad, who had
undertaken to fill the gap caused by Primrose and Phœbe.
Bearing a panier piled with fruit, he had not got far before the
minstrels called forth several couples to their feet.
The latest jazz, bewildering, glittering, exuberant as the soil, a
jazz, throbbing, pulsating, with a zim, zim, zim, a jazz all abandon
and verve that had drifted over the glowing savannah and the waving
cane-fields from Cuna-Cuna by the Violet Sea, invited, irresistibly,
to motion every boy and girl.
“Prancing Nigger, hab a dance?” his wife, transported, shrilled: but
Mr. Mouth was predicting a Banana slump to Mrs. Walker, the local
midwife, and paid no heed.
Torso-to-torso, the youngsters twirled, while even a pair of majestic
matrons, Mrs. Friendship and Mrs. Mother, went whirling away (together)
into the brave summer dusk. Accepting the invitation of Bamboo, Miami
rose, but before dancing long complained of the heat.
“Sh’o, it cooler in de Plantation,” he suggested, pointing along the
road.
“Oh, I too much afraid!”
“What for you afraid?”
But Miami only laughed, and tossed her hand as if she were scattering
dewdrops.
Following the roving fireflies, and the adventurous flittermice, they
strolled along in silence. By the roadside, two young men, friends,
walking with fingers intermingled, saluted them softly. An admirable
evening for a promenade! Indescribably sweet, the floating field-scents
enticed them witchingly on.
“Shi!” she exclaimed as a bird skimmed swiftly past with a chattering
cry.
“It noddin’, deah, but a lil wee owl!”
“An’ it to make my heart go so,” she murmured, with a sidelong smiling
glance.
He had a new crimson loincloth, and a blood pink carnation at his ear.
“What for you afraid?” he tenderly pressed.
“It much cooler heah, doh it still very hot,” she inconsequently
answered, pausing to listen to the fretting of the hammer tree-frogs in
the dusk.
“Dey hold a concert honey lub, all for us.”
Rig a jig jig, rig a jig jig....
“Just hark to de noise!” she murmured, starting a little at the silver
lightning behind the palms.
“Just hark,” he repeated, troubled.
Rig a jig jig, rig a jig jig....
V
Little jingley trot-trot-trot, over the Savannah, hey--!
Joggling along towards Cuna-Cuna the creaking caravan shaped its
course. Seated in a hooded chariot, berced by mule-bells, and nibbling
a shoot of ripe cane, Mrs. Mouth appeared to have attained the heights
of bliss. Disregarding, or insensitive to her husband’s incessant
groans, (wedged in between a case of pineapples, and a box marked
“lingerie”), she abandoned herself voluptuously to her thoughts. It was
droll to contemplate meeting an old acquaintance, Nini Snagg, who had
gone to reside in Cuna-Cuna long ago: “Fancy seein’ you!” she would
say, and how they both would laugh.
Replying tersely to the innumerable “what would you do ifs” of
her sister, supposing attacks from masked-bandits or ferocious
wild-animals, Miami moped.
All her whole heart yearned back behind her, and never had she loved
Bamboo so much as now.
“--if a big, shaggy buffalo, wid two, sharp, horns, dat long, were to
rush right at you?” Edna was plaguing her, when a sudden jolt of the
van set up a loud cackling from a dozen scared cocks and hens.
“Drat dose fowl; as if dair were none in Cuna-Cuna!” Mrs. Mouth
addressed her husband.
“Not birds ob dat brood,” he retorted, plaintively starting to sing.
“I t’ink when I read dat sweet story ob old,
When Jesus was here among men,
How He called lil chillens as lambs to His fold,
I should hab like to hab been wid dem den!
I wish dat His hands had been placed ahn my head,
Dat His arms had been thrown aroun’ me,
An’ dat I might hab seen His kind look when He said,
Let de lil ones come unto me!”
“Mind de dress-basket don’t drop down, deah, an’ spoil our clo’,” Mrs.
Mouth exclaimed, indicating a cowskin trunk that seemed to be in peril
of falling; for, from motives of economy and ease, it had been decided
that not before Cuna-Cuna should rear her queenly towers above them
would they change their floral garlands for the more artificial fabrics
of the town, and, when Edna, vastly to her importance, should go into
a pair of frilled “invisibles” and a petticoat for the first amazing
time; nor, indeed, would Mr. Mouth himself take “to de pants,” until
his wife and daughters should have assumed their skirts. But this, from
the languid pace at which their vehicle proceeded, was unlikely to be
just yet. In the torrid tropic noontime, haste, however, was quite out
of the question. Bordered by hills, long, yellow and low, the wooded
savannah rolled away beneath a blaze of trembling heat.
“I don’t t’ink much ob dis part of de country,” Mrs. Mouth commented.
“All dese common palms ... de cedar wood-tree, dat my tree. Dat is de
timber I prefer.”
“An’ some,” Edna pertly smiled, “dey like best de bamboo....”
A remark that was rewarded by a blow on the ear.
“Now she set up a hullabaloo like de time de scorpion bit her botty,”
Mrs. Mouth lamented, and, indeed, the uproar made, alarmed from the
boskage a cloud of winsome soldier-birds and inquisitive parroquets.
“Oh my God,” Mr. Mouth exclaimed. “What for you make all dat dere
noise?” But his daughter paid no attention, and soon sobbed herself to
sleep.
Advancing through tracks of acacia-scrub, or groves of nutmeg-trees,
they jolted along in the gay, exalting sunlight. Flowers brighter
than love, wafting the odour of spices, strewed in profusion the long
guinea-grass on either side of the way.
“All dose sweet aprons, if it weren’t fo’ de flies!” Mrs. Mouth
murmured, regarding some heavy, ambered, Trumpet flowers, with a
covetous eye.
“I trust Charlie get bit by no snake!”
“Prancing Nigger! It a lil too late now to t’ink ob dat.”
Since to avoid overcrowding the family party, Charlie was to follow
with his butterfly net, and arrive as he could. And never were
butterflies (seen in nigger-boys’ dreams as brilliant, or frolicsome,
as were those of mid-savannah.) Azure Soledads, and radiant
Conquistadors with frail flamboyant wings, wove about the labouring
mules perpetual fresh rosettes.
“De Lord protect de lad,” Mr. Mouth remarked, relapsing into silence.
Onward through the cloudless noontide, beneath the ardent sun, the
caravan drowsily crawled. As the afternoon advanced, Mrs. Mouth
produced a pack of well-thumbed cards, and cutting, casually, twice,
began interrogating Destiny with these. Reposing as best she might,
Miami gave herself up to her reflections. The familiar aspect of
the wayside palms, the tattered pennons of the bananas, the big
silk-cottons (known, to children, as “Mammee-trees”), all brought to
her mind Bamboo.
“Dair’s somet’in’ dat look like a death dah, dat’s troublin’ me,” Mrs.
Mouth remarked, moodily fingering a greasy ace.
“De Almighty forgib dese foolish games!” Mr. Mouth protestingly said.
“An’ from de lie ob de cards ... it seem as ef de corpse were ob de
masculine species.”
“Wha’ gib you de notion ob dat?”
“Sh’o, a sheep puts his wool on his favourite places,” Mrs. Mouth
returned, reshuffling slowly her pack.
Awakened by her Father’s psalms, Edna’s “What would you do’s” had
commenced with volubility anew, growing more eerie with the gathering
night.
“... if a Wood-Spirit wid two heads an’ six arms, were to take hold ob
you, Miami, from behind?”
“I no do nothin’ at all,” Miami answered briefly.
“Talk not so much ob de jumbies, Chile, as de chickens go to roost!”
Mrs. Mouth admonished.
“Or, if de debil himself should?” Edna insisted, allowing Snowball,
the cat, to climb on to her knee.
“Nothin’, sh’o,” Miami murmured, regarding dreamily the sun’s sinking
disk, that was illuminating all the Western sky with incarnadine and
flamingo-rose. Ominous in the falling dusk, the savannah rolled away,
its radiant hues effaced beneath a rapid tide of deepening shadow.
“Start de gramophone gwine girls, an’ gib us somet’in’ bright!” Mrs.
Mouth exclaimed, depressed by the forlorn note the Twa-oo-Twa-oo bird,
that mingled its lament with a thousand night cries from the grass.
“When de saucy female sing: ‘My Ice Cream Girl,’ fo’ sh’o she scare de
elves.”
And as though by force of magic, the nasal soprano of an invisible
songstress rattled forth with tinkling gusto a music-hall air with a
sparkling refrain.
“And the boys shout Girlie, hi!
Bring me soda, soda, soda,
(Aside, spoken) (Stop your fooling there and let me alone!)
For I’m an Ice Cream Soda Girl.”
“It put me in mind ob de last sugar-factory explosion! It was de same
day dat Snowball crack de Tezzrazine record. Drat de cat.”
“O, Lordey Lord! Wha’ for you make dat din?” Mr. Mouth complained,
knotting a cotton handkerchief over his head.
“I hope you not gwine to be billeous, honey, afore we get to Lucia?”
“Lemme alone. Ah’m thinkin’....”
Pressing on by the light of a large clear moon, the hamlet of Lucia,
the halting-place proposed for the night, lay still far ahead.
Stars, like many Indian pinks, flecked with pale brightness the sky
above; towards the horizon shone the Southern Cross, while the Pole
Star, through the palm-fronds, came and went.
“_And the men cry Girlie, hi!_
_Bring me_--”
“Silence, dah! Ah’m thinkin’....”