Improvising at the piano, Piltzenhoffer, kiddy-grand, he was contented,
happy. The creative fertility, bursting from a radiant heart, more than
ordinary 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’ of 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 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
closter, 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, its 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’?”
“Excuse, missey, but....”
“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: but 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 [Greek: 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 Kattie 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, recognizing 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. “Oh
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-fowl 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,
relevelling the glass. Perfect. Good lenses these; one could even
read a physician’s doorplate across the way: “Hours 2-4, Agony
guaranteed”--obviously, a dentist, and the window-card too, above,
“Miss--? Miss--? Miss--?--_Speciality_: 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’ ’ticklers, 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, together as the warning salute, fired at sundown,
from the fort heights, above the town, reverberated sadly.
“Oh, la, la,” she laughed, following the wheeling flight of some birds
that rose startled 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 tonight. Suppose we go?”
_Havana--Bordighera._
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED PRINTERS, LONDON
AND WOKING