II.
As we stepped on land and walked up under the shade of mahogany and mango trees, while the boatman’s fees were being struggled with, it seemed to me that I had never walked in so clean a street, or stood in such delicious shade. Oh, it was so clean and cool and beautiful! The macadamised streets were sprinkled and moist, the houses were all white and green, hugged close by high-walled gardens overflowing with flowering vines,—in particular that marvellous Bougainvillia, which flourishes in such triumphant splendour over these tropic walls; and everywhere the odours were sweet. The sky, as it glistened through the heavy, glossy mangoes, was as blue as blue can be, and the women carriers of water moved with rapid, noiseless tread, bearing their burdens upon their turbaned heads, and the little children offered us flowers. I find, as I write, that my mind constantly reverts to the cleanliness of the place. First, I said: “Oh, how charming!” and then, “Oh, how clean!” but, before I proceed further, you should be told that, the widely followed example of Spain—mother of the picturesque—is not responsible for this delightful condition of things, for in the Spanish-speaking islands, alas! it is otherwise!
Just here I must make a confession. I couldn’t tell you of the petty blemishes on the time-furrowed brow of wonderful old Santo Domingo—no, I could not, for there were those tears that for centuries had worn their cankering way across the face of the weary old Mother Church,—and then the long-suffering bell, and the tired, sad-faced sun-dial! No, I could not tell you then; and now that the memory of those tears comes to me again, I hardly feel it in me to confess to you after all. No, I never can! Those half-forgiven regrets could be told only to the dispassionate bells of the City of the Holy Sunday; you shall never hear them.
Yes, Charlotte Amalie’s face was clean. She wore a fresh pinafore and a green frock, and her bonnet was pink and starry white; and she was very prim and quiet, was the Lady Charlotte, despite her merry, laughing eyes. But the little lady has a funny lot of children. She doesn’t mind, though—not she. She folds her hands, and shakes her pink and white bonnet, and makes no apology. A funny lot of children she has indeed: blond pickaninnies and black babies,—black whites with kinky hair and white blacks with straight hair, all higgledy-piggledy, and they all speak a blond pickaninny’s language. Charlotte Amalie herself, when in state, speaks real English, and some of her officials Danish and French, as well. Her little daily paper, which came to us wet from the press,—Lightbourn’s Mail Notes,—was printed in English; so you see her ladyship knows the real world-language when she sees it, even if she is a foster-child of Denmark and burdened with the everlasting curse of Ham.
