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
lifelessly across 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 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 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 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....
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 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’ _I_ cannot 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 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, _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 sat 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, 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’.”