II
“Silver bean-stalks, silver bean-stalks, oh hé, oh hé,” down the long village street from door to door, the cry repeatedly came, until the vendor’s voice was lost on the evening air.
In a rocking chair, before the threshold of a palm-thatched cabin, a matron with broad, bland features, and a big untidy figure, surveyed the scene with a nonchalant eye.
Beneath some tall trees, bearing flowers like flaming bells, a few staid villagers sat enjoying the rosy dusk, while, strolling towards the sea, two young men passed by with fingers intermingled.
With a slight shrug, the lady plied her fan.
As the Mother of a pair of oncoming girls, the number of ineligible young men, or confirmed bachelors around the neighbourhood was a constant source of irritation....
“Sh’o, dis remoteness bore an’ weary me to death,” she exclaimed, addressing someone through the window behind; and receiving no audible answer, she presently rose, and went within.
It was the hour when, fortified by a siesta, Mrs. Ahmadou Mouth was wont to approach her husband on general household affairs, and to discuss, in particular, the question of their removal to the town; for, with the celebration of their Pearl-wedding, close at hand, the opportunity to make the announcement of a change of residence to their guests, ought not, she believed, to be missed.
“We leave Mediavilla for de education ob my daughters,” she would say; or, perhaps: “We go to Cuna-Cuna for de finishing ob mes filles!”
But, unfortunately, the reluctance of Mr. Mouth to forsake his Home seemed to increase from day to day.
She found him asleep, bolt upright, his head gently nodding, beneath a straw-hat beautifully browned.
“Say, nigger, lub,” she murmured, brushing her hand featheringly along his knee, “say, nigger, lub, I gotta go!”
It was the tender prelude to the storm.
Evasive (and but half-awake), he warned her. “Let me alone; Ah’m thinkin’.”
“Prancing Nigger, now come on!”
“Ah’m thinkin’.”
“Tell me what for dis procrastination?” Exasperated, she gripped his arm.
But for all reply, Mr. Mouth drew a volume of revival hymns towards him, and turned on his wife his back.
“You ought to shame o’ you-self, sh’o,” she caustically commented, crossing to the window.
The wafted odours of the cotton-trees without, oppressed the air. In the deepening twilight, the rising moonmist, already obscured the street.
“Dis place not healthy. Dat damp! Should my daughters go off into a decline ...” she apprehensively murmured, as her husband started softly to sing.
“For ebber wid de Lord!
Amen; so let it be;
Life from de dead is in dat word,
’Tis immortality.”
“If it’s de meeting-house dats de obstruction, dair are odders, too, in Cuna-Cuna,” she observed.
“How often hab I bid you nebba to mention dat modern Sodom in de hearing ob my presence!”
“De Debil frequent de village, fo’ dat matter, besides de town.”
“Sh’o nuff.”
“But yestiddy, dat po’ silly negress Ottalie was seduced again in a Mango track—; an’ dats de third time!”
“Heah in de body pent,
Absent from Him I roam,
Yet nightly pitch my movin’ tent
A day’s march nearer home.”
“Prancing Nigger, from dis indifference to your fambly, be careful lest you do arouse de vials ob de Lord’s wrath!”
“Yet nightly pitch—” he was beginning again, in a more subdued key, but the tones of his wife arrested him.
“Prancing Nigger, lemme say sumptin’ more!” Mrs. Mouth took a long sighing breath: “In dis dark jungle my lil jewel Edna, I feah, will wilt away....”
“Wh’a gib you cause to speak like dat?”
“I was tellin’ my fortune lately wid de cards,” she reticently made reply, insinuating, by her half-turned eyes, that more disclosures of an ominous nature concerning others besides her daughter had been revealed to her as well.
“Lordey Lord; what is it den you want?”
“I want a Villa with a watercloset—” flinging wiles to the winds, it was a cry from the heart.
“De Lord hab pity on dese vanities an’ innovations!”
“In town, you must rememba, often de houses are far away from de parks;—de city, in dat respect, not like heah.”
“Say nothin’ more! De widow ob my po’ brudder Willie, across de glen, she warn me I ought nebba to listen to you.”
“Who care for a common woman, dat only read de Negro World, an’ nebba see anyt’ing else!” she swelled.
Mr. Mouth turned conciliatingly.
“To-morrow me arrange for de victuals for our ebenin’ at Home!”
“Good, bery fine,” she murmured, acknowledging through the window the cordial “good-night” of a few late labourers, returning from the fields, each with a bundle of sugar-cane poised upon the head.
“As soon as marnin’ dawn me take dis bizniz in hand.”
“Only pramas, nigger darlin’,” she cajoled, “dat durin’ de course of de reception you make a lil speech to inform de neighbours ob our gwine away bery soon, for de sake of de education ob our girls.”
“Ah cyan pramas nothin’.”
“I could do wid a change too, honey, after my last miscarriage.”
“Change come wid our dissolution,” he assured her, “quite soon enuff!”
“Bah,” she murmured, rubbing her cheek to his: “we set out on our journey sh’o in de season ob Novemba.”
To which with asperity he replied: “Not for two Revolutions!” and rising brusquely, strode solemnly from the room.
“Hey-ho-day,” she yawned, starting a wheezy gramophone, and sinking down upon his empty chair; and she was lost in ball-room fancies (whirling in the arms of some blonde young foreigner), when she caught sight of her daughter’s reflection in the glass.
Having broken, or discarded her girdle of leaves, Miss Miami Mouth, attracted by the gramophone, appeared to be teaching a hectic two-step to the cat.
“Fie, fie, my lass. Why you be so Indian?” her mother exclaimed, bestowing, with the full force of a carpet-slipper, a well-aimed spank from behind.
“Aïe, aïe!”
“Sh’o: you nohow select!”
“Aïe....”
“De low exhibition!”
“I had to take off my apron, ’cos it seemed to draw de bees,” Miami tearfully explained, catching up the cat in her arms.
“Ob course, if you choose to wear roses....”
“It was but ivy!”
“De berries ob de ivy, entice de same,” Mrs. Mouth replied, nodding graciously, from the window, to Papy Paul, the next-door neighbour, who appeared to be taking a lonely stroll with a lanthorn and a pineapple.
“I dats way wondering why Bamboo, no pass, dis ebenin’, too; as a rule, it is seldom he stop so late out upon de sea,” the young girl ventured.
“After I shall introduce you to de world (de advantage ob a good marriage; when I t’ink ob mine!), you will be ashamed, sh’o, to recall dis infatuation.”
“De young men ob Cuna-Cuna (tell me, Mammee), are dey den so nice?”
“Ah, Chile! If I was your age again....”
“Sh’o, dair’s nothin’ so much in dat.”
“As a young girl of eight (Tee-hee!), I was distracting to all the gentlemen,” Mrs. Mouth asserted, confiding a smile to a small, long-billed bird, in a cage, of the variety known as Bequia-Sweet.
“How I wish I’d been born, like you, in August-Town, across de Isthmus!”
“It gib me dis taste fo’ S’ciety, Chile.”
“In S’ciety, don’ dey dress wid clothes on ebery day?”
“Sh’o; surtainly.”
“An’ don’t dey nebba tickle?”
“In August-Town, de aristocracy conceal de best part ob deir bodies; not like heah!”
“An’ tell me, Mammee ...? De first lover you eber had ... was he half as handsome as Bamboo?”
“De first dude, Chile, I eber had, was a lil, lil buoy, ... wid no hair (whatsoeber at all), bal’ like a calabash!” Mrs. Mouth replied, as her daughter Edna entered with the lamp.
“Frtt!” the wild thing tittered, setting it down with a bang: with her cincture of leaves and flowers, she had the éclat of a butterfly.
“Better fetch de shade,” Mrs. Mouth exclaimed, staring squeamishly at Miami’s shadow on the wall.
“Already it grow dark; no one about now at dis hour ob night at all.”
“Except thieves an’ ghouls,” Mrs. Mouth replied, her glance straying towards the window.
But only the little blue-winged Bats were passing beneath a fairyland of stars.
“When I do dis, or dis, my shadow appear as formed as Mimi’s!”
“Sh’o, Edna, she dat provocative to-day.”
“Be off at once, Chile, an’ lay de table for de ebenin’ meal; an’ be careful not to knock de shine off de new tin-teacups,” Mrs. Mouth commanded, taking up an Estate-Agent’s catalogue, and seating herself comfortably beneath the lamp.
“‘City of Cuna-Cuna,’” she read, “‘in the Heart of a Brainy District (within easy reach of University, shops, etc.). A charming, Freehold Villa. Main drainage. Extensive views. Electric light. Every convenience.’”
“Dat sound just de sort ob lil shack for me.”