Transcriber’s Note:
Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.
SORROW IN SUNLIGHT
Sorrow in Sunlight
BY
RONALD FIRBANK
LONDON
BRENTANO’S LTD.
PUBLISHERS
One Thousand Copies of
this Edition have been
printed, of whichthis is
No. 192
SORROW IN SUNLIGHT
I
Looking gloriously bored, Miss Miami Mouth gaped up into the boughs ofa giant silk-cotton-tree. In the lethargic noontide nothing stirred:all was so still, indeed, that the sound of someone snoring was clearlyaudible among the cane-fields far away.
“After dose yams an’ pods an’ de white falernum, I dats way sleepytoo,” she murmured, fixing heavy, somnolent, eyes upon the prospectthat lay before her.
Through the sun-tinged greenery shone the sea, like a floor of silverglass strewn with white sails.
Somewhere out there, fishing, must be her boy, Bamboo!
And, inconsequently, her thoughts wandered from the numerousshark-casualties of late to the mundane proclivities of her mother;for to quit the little village of Mediavilla for the capital was thatdame’s fixed obsession.
Leave Mediavilla, leave Bamboo! The young negress fetched a sigh.
In what, she reflected, way would the family gain by enteringSociety, and how did one enter it, at all? There would be a gathering,doubtless, of the elect (probably armed), since the best Society isexclusive, and difficult to enter. And then? Did one burrow? Or charge?She had sometimes heard it said that people “pushed” ... and closingher eyes, Miss Miami Mouth sought to picture her parents, assisted byher small sister, Edna, and her brother, Charlie, forcing their way,perspiring, but triumphant, into the highest social circles of the cityof Cuna-Cuna.
Across the dark savannah country the city lay, one of the chiefalluring cities of the world: The Celestial city of Cuna-Cuna,[Pg 7]Cuna, city of Mimosa, Cuna, city of Arches, Queen of the Tropics,Paradise—almost invariably travellers referred to it like that.
Oh, everything must be fantastic there, where even the very pickneysput on clothes! And Miss Miami Mouth glanced fondly down at her ownplump little person, nude, but for a girdle of creepers that she wouldgather freshly twice a day.
“It would be a shame, sh’o, to cover it,” she murmured drowsily,caressing her body; and moved to a sudden spasm of laughter, shetittered: “No! really. De ideah!”
II
“Silver bean-stalks, silver bean-stalks, oh hé, oh hé,” down the longvillage street from door to door, the cry repeatedly came, until thevendor’s voice was lost on the evening