Part 5
“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._
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