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Past the Presidency and the public park, the Theatres Maxine Bush, Eden-Garden, and Apollo, along the Avenida, and the Jazz Halls by the wharf, past little suburban shops, and old, deserted churchyards where bloom geraniums, through streets of squalid houses, and onward skirting pleasure lawns and orchards, bibbitty-bobbitty, beneath the sovereign brightness of the sky, the Farananka tram crawled along.
Surveying the landscape listlessly through the sticks of her fan, Miss Edna Mouth grew slightly bored—alas, poor child; couldst thou have guessed the blazing brightness of thy Star, thou wouldst doubtless have been more alert!
“Sh’o, it dat far an’ tejus,” she observed to the conductor, lifting upon him the sharp-soft eyes of a parroquet.
She was looking bewitching in a frock of silverish mousseleine and a violet tallyho cap, and dangled upon her knees an intoxicating sheaf of blossoms, known as Marvel of Peru.
“Hab patience, lil Missey, an’ we soon be dah.”
* * * * *
“He tells me, dear child, he tells me,” Madame Ruiz was rounding a garden path, upon the arm of her son, “he tells me, Vitti, that the systole and diastole of my heart’s muscles are slightly inflamed; and that I ought, darling, to be very careful....”
Followed by a handsome borzoi, and the pomeranian Snob, the pair were taking their usual post-prandial exercise beneath the trees.
“Let me come, Mother, dear,” he murmured without interrupting, “over the other side of you; I always like to be on the right side of my profile!”
“And, really, since the affair of Madame de Bazvalon, my health has hardly been what it was.”
“That foolish little woman,” he uncomfortably laughed.
“He tells me my nerves need rest,” she declared, looking pathetically up at him.
He had the nose of an actress, and ink-black hair streaked with gold, his eyes seemed to be covered with the freshest of fresh dark pollen, while nothing could exceed the vivid pallor of his cheeks, or the bright sanguine of his mouth.
“You go out so much, Mother.”
“Not so much!”
“So very much.”
“And he forbids me my opera-box for the rest of the week! So last night I sat at home, dear child, reading the Life of Lazarillo de Tormes.”
“I don’t give a damn,” he said, “for any of your doctors.”
“So vexing, though; and apparently Lady Bird has been at death’s door, and poor Peggy Povey too. It seems she got wet on the way to the Races; and really I was sorry for her when I saw her in the paddock; for the oats and the corn, and the wheat and the tares, and the barley and the rye, and all the rest of the reeds and grasses in her pretty Lancret hat, looked like nothing so much as manure.”
“I adore to folly her schoolboy’s moustache!”
“My dear, Age is the one disaster,” Madame Ruiz remarked, raising the rosy dome of her sunshade a degree higher above her head.
They were pacing a walk radiant with trees and flowers as some magician’s garden, that commanded a sweeping prospect of long, livid sands, against a white green sea.
“There would seem to be several new yachts, darling,” Madame Ruiz observed.
“The Duke of Wellclose with his duchess (on their wedding-tour) arrived with the tide.”
“Poor man; I’m told that he only drove to the church after thirty brandies!”
“And the Sea-Thistle, with Lady Violet Valesbridge, and, oh, such a crowd.”
“She used to be known as ‘The Cat of Curzon Street,’ but I hear she is still quite incredibly pretty,” Madame Ruiz murmured, turning to admire a somnolent peacock, with moping fan, poised upon the curved still arm of a marble mænad.
“How sweet something smells.”
“It’s the China lilies.”
“I believe it’s my handkerchief ...” he said.
“Vain wicked boy; ah, if you would but decide, and marry some nice, intelligent girl.”
“I’m too young yet.”
“You’re twenty-six!”
“And past the age of folly-o,” he made airy answer, drawing from his breast-pocket a flat, jewel-encrusted case, and lighting a cigarette.
“Think of the many men, darling, of twenty-six....” Madame Ruiz broke off, focusing the fruit-bearing summit of a slender arecia palm.
“Foll-foll-folly-o!” he laughed.
“I think I’m going in.”
“Oh, why?”
“Because,” Madame Ruiz repressed a yawn, “because, dear, I feel armchairish.”
With a kiss of the finger tips (decidedly distinguished hands had Vittorio Ruiz), he turned away.
Joying frankly in excess, the fiery noontide hour had a special charm for him.
It was the hour, to be sure, of “the Fawn!”
“Aho, Ahi, Aha!” he carolled, descending half-trippingly a few white winding stairs, that brought him upon a fountain. Palms, with their floating fronds, radiating light, stood all around.
It was here “the creative mood” would sometimes take him, for he possessed no small measure of talent of his own.
His Three Hodeidahs, and Five Phallic Dances for Pianoforte and Orchestra, otherwise known as “Suite in Green,” had taken the whole concert world by storm, and, now, growing more audacious, he was engaged upon an opera to be known, by and by, as Sumaïa.
“Ah Atthis, it was Sappho who told me—” tentatively he sought an air.
A touch of banter there.
“Ah Atthis—” One must make the girl feel that her little secret is out ...; quiz her; but let her know, and pretty plain, that the Poetess had been talking....
“Ah Atthis—”
But somehow or other the lyric mood to-day was obdurate, and not to be persuaded.
“I blame the oysters! After oysters—” he murmured, turning about to ascertain what was exciting the dogs.
She was coming up the drive with her face to the sun, her body shielded behind a spreading bouquet of circumstance.
“It’s all right; they’ll not hurt you.”
“Sh’o, I not afraid!”
“Tell me who it is you wish to see.”
“Mammee send me wid dese flowehs....”
“Oh! But how scrumptious.”
“It strange how dey call de bees; honeybees, sweat-bees, bumble-bees an’ all!” she murmured, shaking the blossoms into the air.
“That’s only natural,” he returned, his hand falling lightly to her arm.
“Madame Ruiz is in?”
“She is: but she is resting; and something tells me,” he suavely added, indicating a grassy bank, “you might care to repose yourself too.”
And indeed after such a long and rambling course, she was glad to accept.
“De groung’s as soft as a cushom,” she purred, sinking with nonchalance to the grass.
“You’d find it,” he said, “even softer, if you’ll try it nearer me.”
“Dis a mighty pretty place!”
“And you—” but he checked his tongue.
“Fo’ a villa so grand, dair must be mo’ dan one privy?”
“Some six, or seven!”
“Ours is broke.”
“You should get it mended.”
“De aggervatines’!” she wriggled.
“Tell me about them.”
And so, not without digressions, she unfolded her life.
“Then you, Charlie, and Mimi are here, dear, to study?”
“As soon as de University is able to receibe us; but dair’s a waiting list already dat long.”
“And what do you do with all your spare time?”
“Goin’ round de shops takes up some ob it. An’ den ob course, dair’s de Cinés. Oh, I love de Lara. We went last night to see Souls in Hell.”
“I’ve not been!”
“Oh it was choice.”
“Was it? Why?”
“De scene ob dat story,” she told him, “happen foreign; ’way crost de big watteh, on de odder side ob de world ... an’ de principal gal, she merried to a man who neglect her (ebery ebenin’ he go to pahtys an’ biars), while all de time his wife she sit at home wid her lil pickney at her breas’. But dair anodder gemplum (a friend ob de fambly) an’ he afiah to woe her; but she only shake de head, slowly, from side to side, an’ send dat man away. Den de hubsom lose his fortune, an’, oh, she dat ’stracted, she dat crazed ... at last, she take to gamblin,’ but dat only make t’ings worse. Den de friend ob de fambly come back, an’ offer to pay all de expenses ef only she unbend: so she cry, an’ she cry, ’cos it grieb her to leab her pickney to de neglect ob de serbants (dair was three ob dem, an old buckler, a boy, an’ a cook), but, in de end, she do, an’ frtt! away she go in de fambly carriage. An’ den, bimeby, you see dem in de bedroom doin’ a bit ob funning.”
“What?”
“Oh ki; it put me in de gigglemints....”
“Exquisite kid.”
“Sh’o, de coffee-concerts an’ de pictchures, I don’t nebba tiah ob dem.”
“Bad baby.”
“I turned thirteen.”
“You are?”
“By de Law ob de Island, I a spinster ob age!”
“I might have guessed it was the Bar! These Law-students,” he murmured, addressing the birds.
“Sh’o, it’s de trute,” she pouted, with a languishing glance through the sticks of her fan.
“I don’t doubt it,” he answered, taking lightly her hand.
“Mercy,” she marvelled: “is dat a watch dah, on your arm?”
“Dark, bright baby!”
“Oh, an’ de lil ‘V.R.’ all in precious stones so blue.” Her frail fingers caressed his wrist.
“Exquisite kid.” She was in his arms.
“Vitti, Vitti!—” It was the voice of Eurydice Edwards. Her face was strained and quivering. She seemed about to faint.