IV
It was the Feast night. In the grey spleen of evening through the dusty lanes towards Mediavilla, county-society flocked.
Peering round a cow-shed door, Primrose and Phœbe, procured as waitresses for the occasion, felt their valour ooze as they surveyed the arriving guests, and dropping prostrate amid the straw, declared, in each others arms, that never, never would they find the courage to appear.
In the road, before a tall tamarind-tree, a well-spread supper board exhaled a pungent odour of fried cascadura fish, exciting the plaintive ravings of the wan pariah dogs, and the cries of a few little stark naked children engaged as guardians to keep them away. Defying an ancient and inelegant custom, by which the hosts welcomed their guests by the side of the road, Mrs. Mouth had elected to remain within the precincts of the house, where, according to tradition, the bridal trophies—cowrie-shells, feathers, and a bouquet of faded orange blossom—were being displayed.
“It seem no more dan yestidday,” she was holding forth gaily over a goblet of Sangaree wine, “it seem no more dan yestidday dat I put on me maiden wreath ob arange blastams to walk wid me nigger to church.”
Clad in rich-hued creepers, she was both looking and feeling her best.
“Sh’o,” a woman with blonde-dyed hair and Buddery eyes exclaimed, “it seem no more dan just like yestidday; dat not so, Papy Paul?” she queried, turning to an old man in a raspberry-pink kerchief, who displayed (as he sat) more of his person than he seemed to be aware of.
But Papy Paul was confiding a receipt for pickling yuccas to Mamma Luna, the mother of Bamboo, and made as if not to hear.
Offering a light, lilac wine, sweet and heady, Miami circled, here and there. She had a cincture of white rose-oleanders, and a bandeau of blue convolvoli. She held a fan.
“Or do you care for anyt’ing else?” she was enquiring, automatically, of Mr. Musket (the Father of three very common girls), as a melodious tinkle of strings announced the advent of the minstrels from Broken Hill.
Following the exodus roadward, it was agreeable to reach the outer air.
Under the high trees by the yard-door gate, the array of vehicles and browsing quadrupeds was almost as numerous as upon a Market day. Coming and going between the little Café of the “Forty Parrots” (with its Bar, spelled Biar in twinkling lights), the quiet village road was agog, with bustling folk, as perhaps never before. All iris in the dusk, a few loosely-loinclothed young men, had commenced dancing aloofly among themselves, bringing down some light (if bitter) banter from the belles.
Pirouetting with these, Miami recognized the twinkling feet of her brother Charlie, a lad who preferred roaming the wide savannah country after butterflies with his net, to the ever-increasing etiquette of his home.
“Sh’o, S’ciety no longer what it wa’,” the mother of two spare lean girls, like young giraffes, was lamenting, when a clamorous gong summoned the assembly to the festal board.
In the glow of blazing palm logs, stoked by capering pickneys, the company, with some considerable jostling, become seated by degrees.
“Fo’ what we gwine to recebe, de Lord make us to be truly t’ankful,” Mr. Mouth’s low voice was lost amid the din. Bending to the decree of Providence, and trusting in God for the welfare of his house, he was resigned to follow the call of duty, by allowing his offspring such educational advantages and worldly polish that only a city can give.
“An’ so I heah you gwine to leab us!” the lady at his elbow exclaimed, helping herself to a claw of a crab.
“Fo’ de sake ob de chillen’s schoolin’,” Mr. Mouth made reply, blinking at the brisk lightning play through the foliage of the trees.
“Dey tell me de amount of licence dat go on ober dah,” she murmured, indicating with her claw the chequered horizon, “but de whole world needs revising, as de Missionary truly say!”
“Indeed, an’ dat’s de trute.”
“It made me cry,” a plump little woman declared, “when de Minister speak so serious on de scandal ob close dancing....”
“Fo’ one t’ing lead sh’o to de nex’!” Mr. Mouth obstrusely assented, turning his attention upon an old negress answering to the name of Mamma May, who was retailing how she had obtained the sunshade, beneath which, since noon, she had walked all the way to the party.
“Ah could not afford a parasol, so Ah just cut miself a lil green bush, an’ held it up ober my head,” she was crooning in gleeful triumph.
“It’s a wonder, indeed, no one gib you a lif’!” several voices observed, but the discussion was drowned by an esoteric song of remote, tribal times from the lips of Papy Paul.
“I am King Elephant-bag,
Ob de rose-pink Mountains!
Tatou, tatouay, tatou....”
provoking a giggle from Miss Stella Spooner, the marvellous daughter of an elderly father, and in which she was joined by the youngest Miss Mouth.
Incontestably a budding Princess, the playful mite was enjoying, with airy nonchalance, her initial experience of Society.
“Ob course she is very jeune,” Mrs. Mouth murmured archly, behind her hand, into the ear of Mr. Musket.
“It’s de Lord’s will,” he cautiously replied, rolling a mystified eye towards his wife (a sable negress out of Africa), continually vaunting her foreign extraction: “I’m Irish,” she would say: “I’m Irish, deah....”
“Sh’o she de born image ob her elder sister!”
“De world all say she to marry de son ob ole Mamma Luna, dat keep de lil shop.”
“Suz! Wha’ nex’?” Mrs. Mouth returned, breaking off to focus Papy Paul, apparently, already, far from sober: “I hav’ saw God, an’ I hav’ spoke wid de President, too!” he was announcing impressively to Mamma Luna, a little old woman in whose veins ran the blood of many races.
“Dair’s no trute at all in dat report,” Mrs. Mouth quietly added, signalling directions to a sturdy, round-bottomed little lad, who had undertaken to fill the gap caused by Primrose and Phœbe.
Bearing a panier piled with fruit, he had not got far before the minstrels called forth several couples to their feet.
The latest jazz, bewildering, glittering, exuberant as the soil, a jazz, throbbing, pulsating, with a zim, zim, zim, a jazz all abandon and verve that had drifted over the glowing savannah and the waving cane-fields from Cuna-Cuna by the Violet Sea, invited, irresistibly, to motion every boy and girl.
“Prancing Nigger, hab a dance?” his wife, transported, shrilled: but Mr. Mouth was predicting a Banana slump to Mrs. Walker, the local midwife, and paid no heed.
Torso-to-torso, the youngsters twirled, while even a pair of majestic matrons, Mrs. Friendship and Mrs. Mother, went whirling away (together) into the brave summer dusk. Accepting the invitation of Bamboo, Miami rose, but before dancing long complained of the heat.
“Sh’o, it cooler in de Plantation,” he suggested, pointing along the road.
“Oh, I too much afraid!”
“What for you afraid?”
But Miami only laughed, and tossed her hand as if she were scattering dewdrops.
Following the roving fireflies, and the adventurous flittermice, they strolled along in silence. By the roadside, two young men, friends, walking with fingers intermingled, saluted them softly. An admirable evening for a promenade! Indescribably sweet, the floating field-scents enticed them witchingly on.
“Shi!” she exclaimed as a bird skimmed swiftly past with a chattering cry.
“It noddin’, deah, but a lil wee owl!”
“An’ it to make my heart go so,” she murmured, with a sidelong smiling glance.
He had a new crimson loincloth, and a blood pink carnation at his ear.
“What for you afraid?” he tenderly pressed.
“It much cooler heah, doh it still very hot,” she inconsequently answered, pausing to listen to the fretting of the hammer tree-frogs in the dusk.
“Dey hold a concert honey lub, all for us.”
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....