Nicasio remains with me till the last moment, to run over my part again, put the finishing touches to my toilette and inspire me with confidence.
But now the big bell, summoning all stragglers to their places, is heard, the audience resume their seats, and the curtain rises for 'Los Mocitos del Dia.'
The scene of the farce is laid in the interior of a 'ventorillo,' or fruiterer's shop, in Cuba, with real bananas, plantains, sugar-cane, cocoa-nuts, mangoes, Panama hats, and limp hand-baskets distributed about the stage. Juana, the mulatto girl—attired in a low-necked, short-sleeved cotton gown and a coloured turban—is discovered smoking an enormous cigar, and washing clothes in a kind of flat tub, called in Creole vernacular a 'batea.' She soliloquises in the drawling nasal tone peculiar to her race, and adopts a Spanish patois which abounds in abbreviated words, suppressed s's, unlisped z's, and s-sounding c's. After singing the 'Candelita,' a favourite Cuban ditty, Juana discourses upon her master Don Gabriel's objections to 'lo mocito,' as she calls them, and describes their rakish habits.
Enter Teresita's lover, Ramon.
The 'mocito' desires an uninterrupted interview with his mistress, and offers to bribe the mulatto with silver 'medios' if she will warn the lovers of the 'enemy's' approach by singing the 'Candelita' outside. Juana accepts the bribe, which she places carefully within the folds of her turban after the fashion of her tribe, and vanishes in quest of her young mistress.
Enter Teresita.—'Válgame Dios! Ramon?'
Ramon.—'Teresita de mi vida!' (Love-scene.)
Teresita refers to her father's dislike to 'los mocitos,' whom Don Gabriel declares to have no occupations save those of gambling and dancing, and who go about 'perfumed with eau-de-Cologne and violet powder.' Her papa's notion of a model son-in-law is an individual who savours of the workshop. Such a man Don Gabriel has discovered in the person of Mister Charles (pronounced Charleys), the engineer of Don Hermenejildo Sanchez' sugar estate.
Ramon is disgusted with this information.
'What!' he exclaims, 'you married to a "fogonero"—a stoker! I will never consent to such a union—first because of my deeply-rooted love for you, and secondly because of my patriotic feeling on the subject. This is a question of race, Teresita mia. It is war between coal and café-a fight between brandy and bananas. Yes; rosbif versus fufú. Mister Charleys is a bisteque (beefsteak), and I am your tasajito con platanito verde machucado!' (a favourite Creole dish).