In a room darkened against the sun, Miami, distracted, wept. Crunched by the maw of a great blue shark: “Oh honey.”
Face downward with one limp arm dangling to the floor, she bemoaned her loss: such love-blank, and aching void! Like some desolate, empty cave, filled with clouds, so her heart.
“An’ to t’ink dat I eber teased you!” she moaned, reproaching herself for the heedless past; and as day passed over day, still she wept.
One mid-afternoon, it was some two weeks later, she was reclining lifelessly across the bed, gazing at the sunblots on the floor. There had been a mild disturbance of a seismic nature that morning, and indeed slight though unmistakable shocks had been sensed repeatedly of late.
“Intercession” services, fully choral—the latest craze of society—filled the churches at present, sadly at the expense of other places of amusement; many of which had been obliged to close down. A religious revival was in the air, and in the Parks and streets elegant dames would stop one another in their passing carriages, and pour out the stories of their iniquitous lives.
Disturbed by the tolling of a neighbouring bell, Miami reluctantly rose.
“Lord! What a din; it gib a po’ soul de grabe-yahd creeps,” she murmured, lifting the jalousie of a sun-shutter and peering idly out.
Standing in the street was a Chinese Laundrymaid, chatting with two Chinamen with osier baskets, while a gaunt pariah dog was rummaging among some egg-shells and banana-skins in the dust before the gate.
“Dat lil fool-fool Ibum, he throw ebberyt’ing out ob de window, an’ nebba t’ink ob de stink,” she commented, as an odour of decay was wafted in on a gust of the hot trade wind. The trade winds! How pleasantly they used to blow in the village of Mediavilla. The blue trade wind, the gold trade wind caressing the bending canes.... City life, what had it done for any of them, after all? Edna nothing else than a harlot (since she had left them there was no other word), and Charlie fast going to pieces, having joined the Promenade of a notorious Bar with its bright particular galaxy of boys.
“Sh’o, ebberyt’ing happier back dah,” she mused, following the slow gait across the street of some barefooted nuns; soon they would be returning, with many converts and pilgrims, to Sasabonsam, beyond the May Day Mountains, where remained a miraculous image of Our Lady of the Sorrows still intact. How if she joined them, too? A desire to express her grief, and thereby ease it, possessed her. In the old times there had been many ways: tribal dances, and wild austerities....