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Read Ebook: Sorrow in Sunlight by Firbank Ronald
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Ebook has 238 lines and 7894 words, and 5 pages
"You can't; it's taken!" the duchess returned, nodding meaningly towards the buffet, where the duke could be seen swizzling whisky at the back of the bar.
"Sh'o! Dese white women seem to t'ink dey can hab ebberyt'ing."
Nevertheless in the stir that followed the song, chairs were forthcoming.
"From de complexion dat female hab, she look as doh she bin boiling bananas!" Mrs. Mouth commented comfortably, loud enough for the duchess to hear.
"De woman in de window dah," Mrs. Mouth remarked, indicating a dowager who had the hard, but resigned look of the Mother of six daughters, in immediate succession. "Hab a look, Prancing Nigger, ob your favourite statesman."
"De immortal Wilberforce!"
"I s'poge it's de whiskers," Mrs. Mouth replied, ruffling gently her "Borgia" sleeves for the benefit of the Archbishop. Rumour had it he was fond of negresses, and that the black private secretary he employed was his own natural son, while some suspected indeed a less natural connexion.
But Madame Hatso was curtseying right and left, and glancing round to address her daughters, Mrs. Mouth perceived with vexation that Edna had vanished.
In the garden he caught her to him: "Flower of the Sugar cane!"
"Misteh Ruiz...."
"Exquisite kid."
"I saw you thu de window-glass all de time, an' dair was I! laughing so silent-ly...."
"My little honey."
"... no; 'cos ob de nabehs," she fluted, drawing him beneath the great flamboyants that stood like temples of darkness all around.
"Sweetheart."
"I 'clar to grashis!" she delightedly crooned as he gathered her up in his arms.
"My little Edna...?...?...?"
"Where you goin' wid me to?"
"There," and he nodded towards the white sea sand.
A yawning butler, an insolent footman, a snoring coachman, a drooping horse....
The last conveyance had driven away, and only a party of "b--d--y niggers," supposed to be waiting for their daughter, was keeping the domestics from their beds.
Ernest, the bepowdered footman, believed them to be thieves, and could have sworn he saw a tablespoon in the old coon's pocket.
Hardly able to restrain his tears, Mr. Mouth sat gazing vacuously at the floor.
"Wha' can keep de chile?... Oh Lord ... I hope dair noddin' wrong."
"On such a lovely ebenin' what is time!" Mrs. Mouth exclaimed, taking up an attitude of night-enchantment by the open door.
A remark that caused Butler, and subordinate, to cough.
"It not often I see de cosmos look so special!"
"Ef she not heah soon, we better go widout her," Miami murmured, who was examining the visitors' cards on the hall table undismayed by the eye of Ernest.
"It's odd she should so procrastinate; but la jeunesse, c'est le temps ou l'on s'amuse," Mrs. Mouth blandly declared, seating herself tranquilly by her husband's side.
"Dair noddin', I hope, de matteh...."
"Eh, suz, my deah! Eh, suz." Reassuringly, she tapped his arm.
"Sir Victor Virtue, Lady Bird, Princess Altamisal," Miami tossed their cards.
"Sh'o it was a charming ebenin'! Doh I was sorry for de duchess, wid de duke, an' he all nasty drunk wid spirits."
"I s'poge she use to it."
"It was a perfect skangle! Howebber, on de whole, it was quite an enjoyable pahty--doh dat music ob Wagner, it gib me de retches."
"It bore me, too," Miami confessed, as a couple of underfootmen made their appearance, and joining their fidgeting colleagues by the door, waited for the last guests to depart, in a mocking, whispering group.
"Ef she not here bery soon," Miami murmured, vexed by the servants' impertinent smiles.
"Sh'o, she be here directly," Mrs. Mouth returned, appraising through her fan-sticks the footmen's calves.
"It daybreak already!" Miami yawned, moved to elfish mirth by the over-emphasis, of rouge on her mother's round cheeks.
But under the domestics' mocking stare, their talk at length was chilled to silence.
From the garden come the plaintive wheepling of a bird , while above the awning of the door, the stars were wanly paling.
"Prancing Nigger, sah, heah de day. Dair no good waitin' any more."
It was on their return from the Villa Alba, that they found a letter signed "Mamma Luna," announcing the death of Bamboo.
He had gone out, it seemed, upon the sea to avoid the earthquake , but the boat had overturned, and the evil sharks....
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.
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