Part 4

She had a gown of the new mignonette satin, with “episcopal” sleeves lined with red.

“Come, girls, de cab is waiting; but perhaps you no savey dat.”

They didn’t; and, for some time, dire was the confusion.

In the Peacock drawing-room of the Villa Alba, the stirring ballet music from _Isfahan_ filled the vast room with its thrilling madness. Upon a raised estrade, a corps of dancing boys, from Sankor, had glided amid a murmur of applause.

The combination of charity and amusement had brought together a crowded and cosmopolitan assembly, and early though it was, it was evident already that with many more new advents there would be a shortage of chairs. From their yachts had come several distinguished birds of passage, exhaling an atmosphere of Paris and Park Lane.

Wielding a heavy bouquet of black feathers, Madame Ruiz, robed in a gown of malmaison cloth-of-silver, watched the dancers from an alcove by the door.

Their swaying torsos, and weaving gliding feet, fettered with chains of orchids and hung with bells, held a fascination for her.

“My dear, they beat the Hodeidahs! I’m sure I never saw anything like it,” the Duchess of Wellclose remarked admiringly: “That little one Fred,” she murmured, turning towards the Duke.

A piece of praise, a staid, small body in a demure lace cap chanced to hear.

This was “the incomparable” Miss McAdam, the veteran ballet mistress of the Opera-house, and inventrix of the dance. Born in the frigid High Street of Aberdeen, “Alice,” as she was universally known among enthusiastic patrons of the ballet, had come originally to the tropics as companion to a widowed clergyman in Orders, when, as she would relate (in her picturesque, native brogue), at the sight of _Nature_ her soul had awoke. Self-expression had come with a rush; and, now that she was ballet mistress of the Cunan opera, some of the daring _ensembles_ of the Scottish spinster would embarrass even the good Cunans themselves.

“I’ve warned the lads,” she whispered to Madame Ruiz: “to cut their final figure, on account of the Archbishop. But young boys are so excitable, and I expect they’ll forget!”

Gazing on their perfect backs, Madame Ruiz could not but mourn the fate of the Painter, who, like Dalou, had specialized almost exclusively on this aspect of the human form; for, alas, that admirable Artist had been claimed by the Quake; and although his portrait of Madame Ruiz remained unfinished ... there was still a mole, nevertheless, in gratitude, and as a mark of respect, she had sent her Rolls car to the Mass in honour of his obsequies, with the _crêpe_ off an old black dinner-dress tied across the lamps.

“I see they’re going to,” Miss McAdam murmured, craning a little to focus the Archbishop, then descanting to two ladies with deep purple fans.

“Ah, well! It’s what they do in _Isfahan_,” Madame Ruiz commented, turning to greet her neighbour Lady Bird.

“Am I late for Gebhardt?” she asked, as if Life itself hinged upon the reply.

A quietly silly woman, Madame Ruiz was often obliged to lament the absence of intellect at her door: accounting for it as the consequence of a weakness for negroes, combined with a hopeless passion for the Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford.

But the strident cries of the dancers, and the increasing volume of the music, discouraged all talk, though ladies with collection-boxes (biding their time) were beginning furtively to select their next quarry.

Countess Katty Taosay, _née_ Soderini, a little woman and sure of the giants, could feel in her psychic veins which men were most likely to empty their pockets: English Consul ... pale and interesting, he not refuse to stoop and fumble, nor Follinsbe “Peter,” the slender husband of a fashionable wife, or Charlie Campfire, a young boy like an injured camel, heir to vast banana estates, the darling, and six foot high if an inch.

“Why do big men like little women?” she wondered, waving a fan powdered with blue _paillettes_: and she was still casting about for a reason, when the hectic music stopped.

And now the room echoed briefly with applause, while admiration was divided between the superexcellence of the dancers, and the living beauty of the rugs which their feet had trod--rare rugs from Bokhara-i-Shareef, and Kairouan-city-of-Prayer, lent by the mistress of the house.

Entering on the last hand-clap, Mr. and Mrs. Mouth, followed by their daughters, felt, each, in their several ways, they might expect to enjoy themselves.

“Prancing Nigger, what a _furore_!” Mrs. Mouth exclaimed. “You b’lieb, I hope, now, dat our tickets was worth de money.”

Plucking at the swallow-tails of an evening “West-End,” Mr. Mouth was disinclined to reopen a threadbare topic.

“It queah how few neegah dair be,” he observed, scanning the brilliant audience, many of whom, taking advantage of an interval, were flocking towards a buffet in an adjoining conservatory.

“Prancing Nigger, I feel I could do wid a glass ob champagne.”

Passing across a corridor, it would have been interesting to have explored the spacious vistas that loomed beyond: “Dat must be one ob de priveys,” Edna murmured, pointing to a distant door.

“Seben, Chile, did you say?”

“If not more!”

“She seem fond ob flowehs,” Mr. Mouth commented, pausing to notice the various plants that lined the way: from the roof swung showery azure flowers that commingled with the theatrically-hued cañas, set out in crude, bold, colour-schemes below, that looked best at night. But in their malignant splendour, the orchids were the thing. Mrs. Abanathy, Ronald Firbank (a dingy lilac blossom of rarity untold), Prince Palairet, a heavy blue-spotted flower, and rosy Olive Moonlight, were those that claimed the greatest respect from a few discerning connoisseurs.

“Prancing Nigger, you got a chalk mark on your ‘West-End.’ Come heah, sah, an’ let me brush it.”

Hopeful of glimpsing Vittorio, Miami and Edna sauntered on. With arms loosely entwined about each other’s hips, they made, in their complete insouciance, a conspicuous couple.

“I’d give sumpin’ to see de bedrooms, man, ’cos dair are chapels, an’ barf-rooms, besides odder conveniences off dem,” Edna related, returning a virulent glance from Miss Eurydice Edwards, with a contemptuous, pitying smile.

Traversing a throng, sampling sorbets, and ices, the sisters strolled out upon the lawn.

The big silver stars, how clear they shone--infinitudes, infinitudes.

“Adieu, hydrangeas, adieu, blue, burning South!”

The concert, it seemed, had begun.

“Come chillens, come!”

In the vast drawing-room, the first novelty of the evening--an aria from _Sumaïa_--had stilled all chatter. Deep-sweet, poignant, the singer’s voice was conjuring Sumaïa’s farewell to the Greek isle of Mitylene, bidding farewell to its gracious women, and to the trees of white, or turquoise, in the gardens of Lesbos.

“Adieu, hydrangeas--”

Hardly a suitable moment, perhaps, to dispute a chair! But neither the Duchess of Wellclose or Mrs. Mouth were creatures easily abashed.

“I pay, an’ I mean to hab it.”

“You can’t; it’s taken!” the duchess returned, nodding meaningly towards the buffet, where the duke could be seen swizzling whisky at the back of the bar.

“Sh’o! Dese white women seem to t’ink dey can hab ebberyt’ing.”

“Taken,” the duchess repeated, who disliked what she called the _parfum d’Afrique_ of the “sooties,” and as though to intimidate Mrs. Mouth, she gave her a look that would have made many a Peeress in London quail.

Nevertheless in the stir that followed the song, chairs were forthcoming.

“From de complexion dat female hab, she look as doh she bin boiling bananas!” Mrs. Mouth commented comfortably, loud enough for the duchess to hear.

“Such a large congregation should su’tinly assist de fund!” Mr. Mouth resourcefully said, envisaging with interest the audience; it was not every day that one could feast the gaze on the noble baldness of the Archbishop, or on the subtle _silhouette_ of Miss Maxine Bush, swathed like an idol in an Egyptian tissue woven with magical eyes.

“De woman in de window dah,” Mrs. Mouth remarked, indicating a dowager who had the hard, but resigned look of the Mother of six daughters, in immediate succession. “Hab a look, Prancing Nigger, ob your favourite statesman.”

“De immortal Wilberforce!”

“I s’poge it’s de whiskers,” Mrs. Mouth replied, ruffling gently her “Borgia” sleeves for the benefit of the Archbishop. Rumour had it he was fond of negresses, and that the black private secretary he employed was his own natural son, while some suspected indeed a less natural connexion.

But Madame Hatso (of Blue Brazil, the Argentine; those nights in Venezuela and Buenos Ayres, “bis” and “bravas”! How the public had roared) was curtseying right and left, and glancing round to address her daughters, Mrs. Mouth perceived with vexation that Edna had vanished.

In the garden he caught her to him: “Flower of the Sugar cane!”

“Misteh Ruiz....”

“Exquisite kid.”

“I saw you thu de window-glass all de time, an’ dair was I! laughing so silent-ly....”

“My little honey.”

“... no; ’cos ob de nabehs,” she fluted, drawing him beneath the great flamboyants that stood like temples of darkness all around.

“Sweetheart.”

“I ’clar to grashis!” she delightedly crooned as he gathered her up in his arms.

“My little Edna...?...?...?”

“Where you goin’ wid me to?”

“There,” and he nodded towards the white sea sand.

A yawning butler, an insolent footman, a snoring coachman, a drooping horse....

The last conveyance had driven away, and only a party of “b--d--y niggers,” supposed to be waiting for their daughter, was keeping the domestics from their beds.

Ernest, the bepowdered footman, believed them to be thieves, and could have sworn he saw a tablespoon in the old coon’s pocket.

Hardly able to restrain his tears, Mr. Mouth sat gazing vacuously at the floor.

“Wha’ can keep de chile?... Oh Lord ... I hope dair noddin’ wrong.”

“On such a lovely ebenin’ what is time!” Mrs. Mouth exclaimed, taking up an attitude of night-enchantment by the open door.

A remark that caused Butler, and subordinate, to cough.

“It not often I see de cosmos look so special!”

“Ef she not heah soon, we better go widout her,” Miami murmured, who was examining the visitors’ cards on the hall table undismayed by the eye of Ernest.

“It’s odd she should so procrastinate; but la jeunesse, c’est le temps ou l’on s’amuse,” Mrs. Mouth blandly declared, seating herself tranquilly by her husband’s side.

“Dair noddin’, I hope, de matteh....”

“Eh, suz, my deah! Eh, suz.” Reassuringly, she tapped his arm.

“Sir Victor Virtue, Lady Bird, Princess Altamisal,” Miami tossed their cards.

“Sh’o it was a charming ebenin’! Doh I was sorry for de duchess, wid de duke, an’ he all nasty drunk wid spirits.”

“I s’poge she use to it.”

“It was a perfect skangle! Howebber, on de whole, it was quite an enjoyable pahty--doh dat music ob Wagner, it gib me de retches.”

“It bore me, too,” Miami confessed, as a couple of underfootmen made their appearance, and joining their fidgeting colleagues by the door, waited for the last guests to depart, in a mocking, whispering group.

“Ef she not here bery soon,” Miami murmured, vexed by the servants’ impertinent smiles.

“Sh’o, she be here directly,” Mrs. Mouth returned, appraising through her fan-sticks the footmen’s calves.

“It daybreak already!” Miami yawned, moved to elfish mirth by the over-emphasis, of rouge on her mother’s round cheeks.

But under the domestics’ mocking stare, their talk at length was chilled to silence.

From the garden come the plaintive wheepling of a bird (intermingled with the coachman’s spasmodic snores), while above the awning of the door, the stars were wanly paling.

“Prancing Nigger, sah, heah de day. Dair no good waitin’ any more.”

It was on their return from the Villa Alba, that they found a letter signed “Mamma Luna,” announcing the death of Bamboo.

XIII

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’.”

XIV

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.