Sorrow in Sunlight

“Silver bean-stalks, silver bean-stalks, oh hé, oh hé,” down the long village street from door to door, the cry repeatedly came, until the vendor’s voice was lost on the evening air.

In a rocking chair, before the threshold of a palm-thatched cabin, a matron with broad, bland features, and a big untidy figure, surveyed the scene with a nonchalant eye.

Beneath some tall trees, bearing flowers like flaming bells, a few staid villagers sat enjoying the rosy dusk, while, strolling towards the sea, two young men passed by with fingers intermingled.

With a slight shrug, the lady plied her fan.

As the Mother of a pair of oncoming girls, the number of ineligible young men, or confirmed bachelors around the neighbourhood was a constant source of irritation....

“Sh’o, dis remoteness bore an’ weary me to death,” she exclaimed, addressing someone through the window behind; and receiving no audible answer, she presently rose, and went within.

It was the hour when, fortified by a siesta, Mrs. Ahmadou Mouth was wont to approach her husband on general household affairs, and to discuss, in particular, the question of their removal to the town; for, with the celebration of their Pearl-wedding, close at hand, the opportunity to make the announcement of a change of residence to their guests, ought not, she believed, to be missed.

“We leave Mediavilla for de education ob my daughters,” she would say; or, perhaps: “We go to Cuna-Cuna for de finishing ob mes filles!”

But, unfortunately, the reluctance of Mr. Mouth to forsake his Home seemed to increase from day to day.

She found him asleep, bolt upright, his head gently nodding, beneath a straw-hat beautifully browned.

“Say, nigger, lub,” she murmured, brushing her hand featheringly along his knee, “say, nigger, lub, I gotta go!”

It was the tender prelude to the storm.

Evasive (and but half-awake), he warned her. “Let me alone; Ah’m thinkin’.”

“Prancing Nigger, now come on!”

“Ah’m thinkin’.”

“Tell me what for dis procrastination?” Exasperated, she gripped his arm.

But for all reply, Mr. Mouth drew a volume of revival hymns towards him, and turned on his wife his back.

“You ought to shame o’ you-self, sh’o,” she caustically commented, crossing to the window.

The wafted odours of the cotton-trees without, oppressed the air. In the deepening twilight, the rising moonmist, already obscured the street.

“Dis place not healthy. Dat damp! Should my daughters go off into a decline ...” she apprehensively murmured, as her husband started softly to sing.

“For ebber wid de Lord! Amen; so let it be; Life from de dead is in dat word, ’Tis immortality.”

“If it’s de meeting-house dats de obstruction, dair are odders, too, in Cuna-Cuna,” she observed.

“How often hab I bid you nebba to mention dat modern Sodom in de hearing ob my presence!”

“De Debil frequent de village, fo’ dat matter, besides de town.”

“Sh’o nuff.”

“But yestiddy, dat po’ silly negress Ottalie was seduced again in a Mango track--; an’ dats de third time!”

“Heah in de body pent, Absent from Him I roam, Yet nightly pitch my movin’ tent A day’s march nearer home.”

“Prancing Nigger, from dis indifference to your fambly, be careful lest you do arouse de vials ob de Lord’s wrath!”

“Yet nightly pitch--” he was beginning again, in a more subdued key, but the tones of his wife arrested him.

“Prancing Nigger, lemme say sumptin’ more!” Mrs. Mouth took a long sighing breath: “In dis dark jungle my lil jewel Edna, I feah, will wilt away....”