Part 2

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’....”

VI

Cuna, full of charming roses, full of violet shadows, full of music, full of Love, Cuna...!

Leaning from a balcony of the Grand Savannah hotel, their instincts all aroused, Miami and Edna gazed out across the Alemeda, a place all foliage, lamplight, and flowers. It was the hour when Society, in slowly-parading carriages, would congregate to take the air beneath the pale mimosas that adorned the favourite promenade. All but recumbent, as though agreeably fatigued by their recent emotions (what wild follies were not committed in shuttered-villas during the throbbing hours of noon?), the Cunans, in their elegant equipages, made for anyone, fresh from the provinces, an interesting and absorbing sight. The liquid-eyed loveliness of the women, and the handsomeness of the men, with their black moustaches and their treacherous smiles--these, indeed, were things to gaze on.

“Oh ki!” Miami laughed delightedly, indicating a foppish, pretty youth, holding in a restive little horse dancing away with him.

Rubbing herself repeatedly, as yet embarrassed by the novelty of her clothes, Edna could only gasp.

“...,” she jabbered, pointing at some flaunting belles in great evening hats and falling hair.

“All dat fine,” Miami murmured, staring in wonderment around.

Dominating the city soared the Opera House, uplifting a big, naked man, all gilt, who was being bitten, or mauled, so it seemed, by a pack of wild animals carved of stone, while near by were the University, and the Cathedral with its low white dome crowned by moss-green tiles.

Making towards it, encouraged by the Vesper bell, some young girls, in muslin masks, followed by a retinue of bustling nuns, were running the gauntlet of the profligates that clustered on the curb.

“Oh, Jesus honey!” Edna cooed, scratching herself in an ecstasy of delight.

“Fo’ shame, Chile, to act so unladylike; if any gen’leman look up he t’ink you make a wicked sign,” Mrs. Mouth cautioned, stepping out upon the balcony from the sitting-room behind.

Inhaling a bottle of sal volatile, to dispel _de megrims_, she was looking dignified in a _décolleté_ of smoke-blue tulle.

“Nebba do _dat_ in S’ciety,” she added, placing a protecting arm around each of her girls.

Seduced, not less than they, by the animation of the town, the fatigue of the journey seemed amply rewarded. It was amusing to watch the crowd before the Ciné Lara, across the way, where many were flocking attracted by the hectic posters of “A Wife’s Revenge.”

“I keep t’inking I see Nini Snagg,” Mrs. Mouth observed, regarding a negress in emerald-tinted silk, seated on a public-bench beneath the glittering greenery.

“Cunan folk dat fine,” Edna twittered, turning about at her Father’s voice:

“W’en de day ob toil is done, W’en de race ob life is run, Heaven send thy weary one Rest for evermore!”

“Prancing Nigger! Is it worth while to wear dose grimaces?”

“Sh’o, dis no good place to be.”

“Why, what dair wrong wid it?”

“Ah set out to look fo’ de Meetin’-House, but no sooner am Ah in de street, dan a female wid her har droopin’ loose down ober her back, an’ into her eyes, she tell me to Come along.”

“Some of dose bold women, dey ought to be shot through dair bottoms!” Mrs. Mouth indignantly said.

“But I nebba answer nothin’.”

“May our daughters respect dair virtue same as you!” Mrs. Mouth returned, focusing wistfully the vast flowery parterre of the Café McDhu’l.

Little city of cocktails, Cuna! The surpassing excellence of thy Barmen, who shall sing?

“See how dey spell ‘Biar,’ Mammee,” Miami tittered: “Dey forget de _i_!”

“Sh’o, Chile, an’ so dey do....”

“Honey Jesus!” Edna broadly grinned: “Imagine de ignorance ob dat.”

VII

Now, beyond the Alemeda, in the modish faubourg of Farananka, there lived a lady of both influence and wealth--the widow of the Inventor of Sunflower Piquant. Arbitress absolute of Cunan society, and owner, moreover, of a considerable portion of the town, the _veto_ of Madame Ruiz, had caused the suicide indeed of more than one social climber. Unhappy, nostalgic, disdainful, selfish, ever about to abandon Cuna-Cuna to return to it no more, yet never budging, adoring her fairy villa far too well, Madame Ruiz while craving for the International-world, consoled herself by watching from afar European Society going speedily to the dogs. Art loving, and considerably musical (many a dizzy venture at the Opera-house had owed its audition to her), she had, despite the self-centeredness of her nature, done not a little to render more brilliant the charming city it amused her with such vehemence to abuse.

One softly gloomy morning, preceding Madame Ruiz’s first _cotillon_ of the Season, the lodge-keeper of the Villa Alba, a negress, like some great, violet bug, was surprised, while tending the brightly-hanging Grape-Fruit in the drive, by an imperative knocking on the gate. At such a matutinal hour only trashy errand-boys shouldering baskets might be expected to call, and giving the summons no heed, the mulatress continued her work.

The Villa Alba, half-buried in spreading awnings, and surrounded by many noble trees, stood but a short distance off the main road, its pleasaunces enclosed by flower-enshrouded walls, all a-zig-zag, like the folds of a screen. Beloved of lizards, and velvet-backed humming-birds, the shaded gardens led on one side to the sea.

“To make such a noise at dis hour,” the negress murmured, going grumblingly at length to the gate, disclosing, upon opening, a gentleman in middle-life, with a toothbrush moustache and a sapphire ring.

“De mist’ess still in bed, sah.”

“In bed?”

“She out bery late, sah, but you find Miss Edwards up.”

And with a nod of thanks, the visitor directed his footsteps discreetly towards the house.

Although not, precisely, _in_ her bed when the caller, shortly afterwards, was announced, Madame Ruiz was nevertheless as yet in deshabille.

“Tiresome man, what does he want to see me about?” she exclaimed, gathering around her a brocaded-wrap formed of a priestly cope.

“He referred to a lease, ma’am,” the maid replied.

“A lease!” Madame Ruiz raised eyes dark with spleen.

The visit of her agent, or man of affairs, was apt to ruffle her composure for the day: “Tell him to leave it, and go,” she commanded, selecting a nectarine from a basket of iced-fruits beside her.

Removing reflectively the sensitive skin, her mind evoked, in ironic review, the chief salient events of society, scheduled to take place on the face of the map in the course of the day.

The marriage of the Count de Nozhel, in Touraine, to Mrs. Exelmans of Cincinnati, the divorce of poor Lady Luckcock in London (it seemed quite certain that one of the five co-respondents was the little carrot-haired Lord Dubelly again), the last “pomps,” at Vienna, of Princess de Seeyohl _née_ Mitchening-Meyong (Peace to her soul! She had led her life).... The christening in Madrid of the girl-twins of the Queen of Spain....

“At her time, I really _don’t_ understand it,” Madame Ruiz murmured to herself aloud, glancing, as though for an explanation, about the room.

Through the flowing folds of the mosquito curtains of the bed, that swept a cool, flagged-floor, spread with skins, showed the oratory, with its waxen flowers, and pendant flickering lights, that burned, night and day, before a Leonardo saint with a treacherous smile. Beyond the little recess came a lacquer commode, bearing a masterly marble group, depicting a pair of amorous hermaphrodites amusing themselves, while above, against the spacious wainscoting of the wall, a painting of a man, elegantly corseted, with a Violet in his moustache, “Study of a Parisian,” was suspended, and which, with its pendant “Portrait of a Lady,” signed Van Dongen, were the chief outstanding objects that the room contained.

“One would have thought that at forty she would have given up having babies,” Madame Ruiz mused, choosing a glossy cherry from the basket at her side.

Through the open window a sound of distant music caught her ear.

“Ah! If only he were less weak,” she sighed, her thoughts turning towards the player, who seemed to be enamoured of the opening movement (rapturously repeated) of _L’Après midi d’un Faune_.

The venetorial habits of Vittorio Ruiz had been from his earliest years the source of his mother’s constant chagrin and despair. At the age of five he had assaulted his Nurse, and, steadily onward, his passions had grown and grown....

“It’s the fault of the wicked climate,” Madame Ruiz reflected, as her companion, Miss Edwards, came in with the post.

“Thanks, Eurydice,” she murmured, smilingly exchanging a butterfly kiss.

“It’s going to be oh so hot, to-day!”

“Is it, dear?”

“Intense,” Miss Edwards predicted, fluttering a gay-daubed paper fan.

Sprite-like, with a little strained ghost-face beneath a silver shock of hair, it seemed as if her long blue eyes had absorbed the Cunan sea.

“Do you remember the giant with the beard?” she asked, “at the Presidency fête?”

“Do I?”

“And we wondered who he could be!”

“Well?”

“He’s the painter of Women’s Backs, my dear!”

“The painter of women’s _what_?”

“An artist.”

“Oh.”

“I wanted to know if you’d advise me to sit.”

“Your back is charming, dear, _c’est un dos d’élite_.”

“I doubt, though, it’s classic,” Miss Edwards murmured, pirouetting slowly before the glass.

But Madame Ruiz was perusing her correspondence, and seemed to be absorbed.

“They’re to be married, in Munich, on the fifth,” she chirruped.

“Who?”

“Elsie and Baron Sitmar.”

“Ah, Ta-ra, dear! In those far worlds....” Miss Edwards impatiently exclaimed, opening wide a window and leaning out.

Beneath the flame-trees, with their spreading tops, one mass of crimson flower, coolly, white-garbed gardeners, with naked feet and big bell-shaped hats of straw, were sweeping slowly, as in some rhythmic dance, the flamboyant blossoms that had fallen to the ground.

“Wasn’t little Madame Haase, dear, born Kattie von Guggenheim?”

“I really don’t know,” Miss Edwards returned, flapping away a fly with her fan.

“This villainous climate! My memory’s going....”

“I wish I cared for Cuna less, that’s all!” Miss Edwards said, her glance following a humming-bird, poised in air, above the sparkling turquoise of a fountain.

“Captain Moonlight ... duty ... (tedious word) ... can’t come!”

“Oh?”

“Such a dull post,” Madame Ruiz murmured, pausing to listen to the persuasive tenor-voice of her son.

“Little mauve nigger boy, I t’ink you break my heart!”

“My poor Vitti! Bless him.”

“He was out last night with some Chinese she.”

“I understood him to be going to _Pelléas and Mélisande_.”

“He came to the Opera-house, but only for a minute.”

“Dios!”

“And, oh, dearest,” Miss Edwards dropped her cheek to her hand.

“Was Hatso as ever delicious?” Madame Ruiz asked, changing the topic as her woman returned, followed by a pomeranian of parts, “Snob”; a dog beautiful as a child.

“We had Gebhardt instead.”

“In Mélisande she’s so huge,” Madame Ruiz commented, eyeing severely the legal-looking packet which her maid had brought her.

“Business, Camilla; _how_ I pity you!”

Madame Ruiz sighed.

“It seems,” she said, “that for the next nine-and-ninety years, I have let a Villa to a Mr. and Mrs. Ahmadou Mouth.”

VIII

Floor of copper, floor of gold.... Beyond the custom-house door, ajar the street at sunrise seemed aflame.

“Have you nothing, young man, to declare?”

“... Butterflies!”

“Exempt of duty. Pass.”

Floor of silver, floor of pearl....

Trailing a muslin net, and laughing for happiness, Charlie Mouth marched into the town.

Oh, Cuna-Cuna! Little city of Lies and Peril! How many careless young nigger boys have gone thus to seal their Doom?

Although the Sun-god was scarcely risen, already the radiant street teemed with life.

Veiled dames, flirting fans, bent on church or market, were issuing everywhere from their doors, and the air was vibrant with the sweet voice of bells.

To rejoin his parents promptly at their hotel was a promise he was tempted to forget.

Along streets all fresh and blue in the shade of falling awnings, it was fine, indeed, to loiter. Beneath the portico of a church, a running fountain drew his steps aside. Too shy to strip and squat in the basin, he was glad to bathe freely his head, feet and chest: then stirred by curiosity to throw a glance at the building, he lifted the long yellow nets that veiled the door.

It was the fashionable church of La Favavoa, and the extemporary address of the Archbishop of Cuna was in full, and impassioned, swing.

“Imagine the world, my friends, had Christ been born a girl!” he was saying in tones of tender dismay as Charlie entered.

Subsiding bashfully to a bench, Charlie gazed around.

So many sparkling fans. One, a delicate light mauve one: “Shucks! If only you wa’ butterflies!” he breathed, contemplating with avidity the nonchalant throng; then perceiving a richer specimen splashed with silver of the same amative tint: “Oh you lil beauty!” And, clutching his itching net to his heart, he regretfully withdrew.

Sauntering leisurely through the cool, Mimosa-shaded streets, he approached, as he guessed, the Presidency. A score of shoeblacks, lolled at cards, or gossip, before its gilded pales. Amazed at their audacity (for the President had threatened more than once to “wring the Public’s neck”), Charlie hastened by. Public gardens, brilliant with sarracenias, lay just beyond the palace, where a music-pavilion, surrounded by palms and rocking-chairs, appeared a favourite, and much-frequented, resort; from here he observed the Cunan bay strewn with sloops and white-sailed yachts, asleep upon the tide. Strolling on, he found himself in the busy vicinity of the Market. Although larger, and more varied, it resembled, in other respects, the village one at home.

“Say, honey, say”--crouching in the dust before a little pyre of mangoes, a lean-armed woman besought him to buy.

Pursued by a confusion of voices, he threaded his way deftly down an alley dressed with booths. Pomegranates, some open with their crimson seeds displayed, banana-combs, and big, veined watermelons, lay heaped on every side.

“I could do wid a slice ob watteh-million,” he reflected: “but to lick an ice-cream dat tempt me more!” Nor would the noble fruit of the baobab, the paw-paw, or the pine, turn him from his fancy.

But no ice-cream stand met his eye, and presently he resigned himself to sit down upon his heels, in the shade of a potter’s stall, and consider the passing crowd.

Missionaries with freckled hands and hairy, care-worn faces, followed by pale girls wielding tambourines of the Army of the Soul, foppish nigger bucks in panamas and palm-beach suits so cocky, Chinamen with osier baskets their nostalgic eyes aswoon, heavily straw-hatted nuns trailing their dust-coloured rags, and suddenly, oh could it be, but there was no mistaking that golden waddle: “Mamma!”

Mamma, Mammee, Mrs. Ahmadou Mouth. All in white, with snow-white shoes and hose so fine, he hardly dare.

“Mammee, Mammee, oh, Mammee....”

“Sonny mine! My lil boy!”

“Mammee.”

“Just to say!”

And, oh, honies! Close behind, behold Miami, and Edna too: The Miss Lips, the fair Lips, the smiling Lips. How spry each looked. The elder (grown a trifle thinner), sweet _à ravir_ in tomato-red, while her sister, plump as a corn-fattened partridge, and very perceptibly powdered, seemed like the flower of the prairie sugar-cane when it breaks into bloom.

“We’ve been to a Music-hall, an’ a pahty, an’ Snowball has dropped black kittens.” Forestalling Miami, Edna rapped it out.

“Oh shucks!”

“An’ since we go into S’ciety, we keep a boy in buttons!”

Mrs. Mouth turned about.

“Where is dat ijit coon?”

“He stay behind to bargain for de peewee birds, Mammee, fo’ to make de taht.”

“De swindling tortoise.”

“An’ dair are no vacancies at de University: not fo’ any ob us!” Edna further retailed, going off into a spasm of giggles.

She was swinging a wicker basket, from which there dangled the silver forked tail of a fish.

“Fo’ goodness’ sake gib dat sea-porcupine to Ibum, Chile,” Mrs. Mouth commanded, as a perspiring niggerling in livery presented himself.

“Ibum, his arms are full already.”

“Just come along all to de Villa now! It dat mignon an’ all so nice. An’ after de collation,” Mrs. Mouth (shocked on the servant’s account at her son’s nude neck) raised her voice: “we go to de habadasher in Palmbranch Avenue, an’ I buy you an Eton colleh!”

IX

“Prancing Nigger, I t’ink it bery strange, dat Madame Ruiz, she nebba call.”

“Sh’o.”