But what right had we to be in the back yard of the Hotel Bellevue? If we didn’t find the gutter agreeable to our over-refined sensibilities why not go where it was “Belle”? But there were those sounds and we were keen on the trail. We should not be thwarted by a flock of waddling ducks. It was evidently from a neighbour’s the sound came, so, picking our steps carefully over a heap of rubbish and broken bottles and discarded ducks’ feet and hens’ feathers, we peeped through a crack in the high board fence and saw in the neighbouring yard one portion of a family party; another crack revealed more, and, putting them together, we counted some eight or ten very serious people sitting around a large oval table, singing a curious chant,—if one dare call it such,—some of them; the others were shaking curious little gourd rattles in time with the monotonous recitative. The “Witch of Endor” tells us that the neighbours are celebrating the birth of twins. Deliver us from triplets!
How far are we from the voodoo and all the savagery of Africa?
There was a glory in that hotel back yard after all. But, to tell the truth, we didn’t discover it until some one behind us, black and half-naked, made a murderous assault upon the turkey. He, the turkey, screaming awful protest, flew into the merciful arms of a breadfruit-tree which hung its great leaves in a sadly apologetic manner over the scene of coffee-burning and waddling ducks. To stand under a breadfruit-tree which was doing its noblest to forget its environment—well, one ought to forgive much, and we did, until we learned that even the breadfruit wasn’t ready done—it had to be cooked.
At last the cloth was laid and the table set, and Little Blue Ribbons unfolded her napkin, and we all did the same, for Little Blue Ribbons seldom makes a mistake. She is a proper child, and had hitherto fed on proper meat. Then we chatted and sat there,—and sat there and chatted. Presently, when we had talked it all over,—the market and the Creole beauty, and everything else,—we stopped talking and just sat there thinking. Sister had some bananas left, and she graciously suggested that fruit before dinner was in good form, so we each took a banana and sat longer.
There was nor sight nor sound of Fräulein Stein, nor of any one belonging to the Stein family. We and our fellow travellers were the silent occupants of the high-ceilinged dining-room. Noon had long since gone with the morning,—one o’clock, and still no signs of life. One-thirty,—from out the silent courtyard, after an hour and a half waiting; from out the back kitchen, near the duck puddle and the breadfruit-tree, there appeared a negro in solemn state. He had been dressing. I suppose he was the one we had been waiting for. He wore an ancient long-tailed coat with brass buttons, a white waistcoat, and very clean trousers—and shoes, too—and a flower in his buttonhole, and he carried in his hand,—yes, dear ones, he carried in his hand (only in one hand, for the other one was needed for purpose of state)—he carried in his hand one small plate of sardines, our appetisers, which had been neatly arranged in two tiny rows of six each. A menial of lower order followed with the bread, enough for one hungry man, and it fell to the first and nearest table. We were hopelessly distant from the sardines and the bread. The solemn head waiter avoided us. We thought we must have offended him. The sardines continued to pass us. Soon a dish of smoking yams was carried on beyond. We knew then that his Majesty had us in disfavour. The “spirit of ’76” arose; we would have sardines or perish. We raided the serving-room. Sister captured a whole box of sardines and I a loaf of bread. We waylaid a boy with coffee, took the pot, hunted up sugar, ran into a black woman, who was handing in a few boiled yams, seized all she had and sat down to the finest meal ever spread: yams, sardines, bread, and black coffee. At two-thirty, a faint odour of turkey hovered over the dining-room, but we didn’t care for turkey; we had said so from the first, and besides, we had known that turkey in his glory. Sardines we had not despised, and we had sardines. And then the bananas helped out, and so did the bread and the bitter coffee. I would not have had the dinner other than it was—no, not for all the waiting; it was all so in keeping with the whole crazy country.
Fräulein Stein never appeared. I do not think there was a Fräulein Stein, or ever had been. She was just made up, along with the “table d’hôte” and the “chambres garnies” and the “douche” and the “jardin d’agrément.” But in a feminine way we laid it up against Fräulein Stein,—that meal and the trees,—and we always shall. For who else do you think could have cut down the trees?
