VII.
It Rains—The Effect—No Miserere—Guirappa-seeking—A Skeleton Horse—B——’s Pantomimes—A Day More—The Bells of Guiness—Market Day—An Invitation—Another Plantation—A Remarkable Tree—Palm-Sunday—A Sundayless World—Dreamland—I Didn’t Smoke—Cushioned Heads.
Wednesday, 28th.
VER since our arrival in Cuba, nature has kept in her after-dinner mood; but to-day, for the first time, clouds are come over the sky with another motive than that of simple ornament. If every cloud is an angel’s face, and no angel’s faces elsewhere, then are we not blessed with angelic physiognomies? For the first time these gauzy waves have ceased to vagabondize over our heads like mere apparitions of loveliness that cannot discover or remember their own errands in the world. In short, the rain has poured in torrents, in desperate cataracts, for two hours. Every thing, as well as the roses, is “dripping and drowned.” The streets are rushing rivers.
But I do not see that nature is especially glad, or even conscious of the change, unless it be in sympathy with our gladness; for it is here that she seems always to have within her, and in the atmosphere she breathes, a fountain of perpetual freshness and youth.
So many weeks of heat and drouth at home would calcine everything to ashes; but now we see all vegetation bright as when it was born. Nature is here a goddess of immortal youth sipping invisible nectar and ambrosia, and forever ministering to her favorites from the secret of her reservoirs.