VI
Cuna, full of charming roses, full of violet shadows, full of music, full of Love, Cuna ...!
Leaning from a balcony of the Grand Savannah hotel, their instincts all aroused, Miami and Edna gazed out across the Alemeda, a place all foliage, lamplight, and flowers. It was the hour when Society, in slowly-parading carriages, would congregate to take the air beneath the pale mimosas that adorned the favourite promenade. All but recumbent, as though agreeably fatigued by their recent emotions (what wild follies were not committed in shuttered-villas during the throbbing hours of noon?), the Cunans, in their elegant equipages, made for anyone, fresh from the provinces, an interesting and absorbing sight. The liquid-eyed loveliness of the women, and the handsomeness of the men, with their black moustaches and their treacherous smiles—these, indeed, were things to gaze on.
“Oh ki!” Miami laughed delightedly, indicating a foppish, pretty youth, holding in a restive little horse dancing away with him.
Rubbing herself repeatedly, as yet embarrassed by the novelty of her clothes, Edna could only gasp.
“...,” she jabbered, pointing at some flaunting belles in great evening hats and falling hair.
“All dat fine,” Miami murmured, staring in wonderment around.
Dominating the city soared the Opera House, uplifting a big, naked man, all gilt, who was being bitten, or mauled, so it seemed, by a pack of wild animals carved of stone, while near by were the University, and the Cathedral with its low white dome crowned by moss-green tiles.
Making towards it, encouraged by the Vesper bell, some young girls, in muslin masks, followed by a retinue of bustling nuns, were running the gauntlet of the profligates that clustered on the curb.
“Oh, Jesus honey!” Edna cooed, scratching herself in an ecstasy of delight.
“Fo’ shame, Chile, to act so unladylike; if any gen’leman look up he t’ink you make a wicked sign,” Mrs. Mouth cautioned, stepping out upon the balcony from the sitting-room behind.
Inhaling a bottle of sal volatile, to dispel de megrims, she was looking dignified in a décolleté of smoke-blue tulle.
“Nebba do dat in S’ciety,” she added, placing a protecting arm around each of her girls.
Seduced, not less than they, by the animation of the town, the fatigue of the journey seemed amply rewarded. It was amusing to watch the crowd before the Ciné Lara, across the way, where many were flocking attracted by the hectic posters of “A Wife’s Revenge.”
“I keep t’inking I see Nini Snagg,” Mrs. Mouth observed, regarding a negress in emerald-tinted silk, seated on a public-bench beneath the glittering greenery.
“Cunan folk dat fine,” Edna twittered, turning about at her Father’s voice:
“W’en de day ob toil is done,
W’en de race ob life is run,
Heaven send thy weary one
Rest for evermore!”
“Prancing Nigger! Is it worth while to wear dose grimaces?”
“Sh’o, dis no good place to be.”
“Why, what dair wrong wid it?”
“Ah set out to look fo’ de Meetin’-House, but no sooner am Ah in de street, dan a female wid her har droopin’ loose down ober her back, an’ into her eyes, she tell me to Come along.”
“Some of dose bold women, dey ought to be shot through dair bottoms!” Mrs. Mouth indignantly said.
“But I nebba answer nothin’.”
“May our daughters respect dair virtue same as you!” Mrs. Mouth returned, focusing wistfully the vast flowery parterre of the Café McDhu’l.
Little city of cocktails, Cuna! The surpassing excellence of thy Barmen, who shall sing?
“See how dey spell ‘Biar,’ Mammee,” Miami tittered: “Dey forget de i!”
“Sh’o, Chile, an’ so dey do....”
“Honey Jesus!” Edna broadly grinned: “Imagine de ignorance ob dat.”