Part 17 (2/2)

The dance took place in the big mess-room, looking out on the fan-palms and tree-ferns of the regimental garden. It was a lovely tropical night, moonlight of course, for all Jamaican entertainments are given at full moon, so as to let the people who ride from a distance get to and fro safely over the breakneck mountain horse-paths. The windows, which open down to the ground, were flung wide for the sake of ventilation; and thus the terrace and garden were made into a sort of vestibule where partners might promenade and cool themselves among the tropical flowers after the heat of dancing. And yet, I don't know how it is, though the climate is so hot in Jamaica, I never danced anywhere so much or felt the heat so little oppressive.

Before the first waltz, Mr. Carvalho came up, accompanied by my old friend Dr. Wade, and was properly introduced to me. By that time my card was pretty full, for of course I was a belle in those days, and being just fresh out from England was rather run after. But I will confess that I had taken the liberty of filling in three later waltzes (unasked) with Mr. Carvalho's name, for I knew by his very look that he could waltz divinely, and I do love a good partner. He did waltz divinely, but at the end of the dance I was really afraid he didn't mean to ask me again. When he did, a little hesitatingly, I said I had still three vacancies, and found he had not yet asked anybody else. I enjoyed those four dances more than any others that evening, the more so, perhaps, as I saw my cousin, Harry Verner of Agualta, was dying with jealousy because I danced so much with Mr. Carvalho.

I must just say a word or two about Harry Verner. He was a planter _pur sang_, and Agualta was one of the few really flouris.h.i.+ng sugar estates then left on the island. Harry was, therefore, naturally regarded as rather a catch; but, for my part, I could never care for any man who has only three subjects of conversation--himself, vacuum-pan sugar, and the wickedness of the French bounty system, which keeps the poor planter out of his own. So I danced away with Mr. Carvalho, partly because I liked him just a little, you know, but partly, also, I will frankly admit, because I saw it annoyed Harry Verner.

At the end of our fourth dance, I was strolling with Mr. Carvalho among the great bushy poinsettias and plumbagos on the terrace, under the beautiful soft green light of that tropical moon, when Harry Verner came from one of the windows directly upon us. ”I suppose you've forgotten, Edith,” he said, ”that you're engaged to me for the next lancers. Mr.

Carvalho, I know you are to dance with Miss Wade; hadn't you better go and look for your partner?”

He spoke pointedly, almost rudely, and Mr. Carvalho took the hint at once. As soon as he was gone, Harry turned round to me fiercely and said in a low angry voice, ”You shall not dance this lancers, you shall sit it out with me here in the garden; come over to the seat in the far corner.”

He led me resistlessly to the seat, away from the noise of the regimental band and the dancers, and then sat himself down at the far end from me, like a great surly bear that he was.

”A pretty fool you've been making of yourself to-night, Edith,” he said in a tone of suppressed anger, ”with that fellow Carvalho. Do you know who he is, miss? Do you know who he is?”

”No,” I answered faintly, fearing he was going to a.s.sure me that my clever new acquaintance was a notorious swindler or a runaway ticket-of-leave man.

”Well, then, I'll tell you,” he cried angrily. ”I'll tell you. He's a coloured man, miss! that's what he is.”

”A coloured man?” I exclaimed in surprise; ”why, he's as white as you and I are, every bit as white, Harry.”

”So he may be, to look at,” answered my cousin; ”but a brown man's a brown man, all the same, however much white blood he may have in him; you can never breed the n.i.g.g.e.r out. Confound his impudence, asking you to dance four times with him in a single evening! You, too, of all girls in the island! Confound his impudence! Why, his mother was a slave girl once on Palmettos estate!”

”Oh, Harry, you don't mean to say so,” I cried, for I was West Indian enough in my feelings to have a certain innate horror of coloured blood, and I was really shocked to think I had been so imprudent as to dance four times with a brown man.

”Yes, I do mean it, miss,” he answered; ”an octaroon slave girl, and Carvalho's her son by old Jacob Carvalho, a Jew merchant at the back of the island, who was fool enough to go and actually marry her. So now you see what a pretty mess you've gone and been and made of it. We shall have it all over Kingston to-morrow, I suppose, that Miss Hazleden, a Hazleden and a Verner, has been flirting violently with a bit of coloured sc.u.m off her own grandfather's estate at Palmettos. A nice thing for the family, indeed!”

”But, Harry,” I said, pleading, ”he's such a perfect gentleman in his manners and conversation, so very much superior to a great many Jamaican young men.”

”Hang it all, miss,” said Harry--he used a stronger expression, for he was not particular about swearing before ladies, but I won't transcribe all his oaths--”hang it all, that's the way of you girls who have been to England. If I had fifty daughters I'd never send one of 'em home, not I. You go over there, and you get enlightened, as you call it, and you learn a lot of radical fal-lal about equality and a-man-and-a-brother, and all that humbug: and then you come back and despise your own people, who are gentlemen and the sons of gentlemen for fifty generations, from the good old slavery days onward. I wish we had them here again, I do, and I'd tie up that fellow Carvalho to a horse-post and flog him with a cow-hide within an inch of his life.”

I was too much accustomed to Harry's manners to make any protest against this vigorous suggestion of reprisals. I took his arm quietly. ”Let us go back into the ballroom, Harry,” I said as persuasively as I was able, for I loathed the man in my heart, ”and for heaven's sake don't make a scene about it. If there is anything on earth I detest, it's scenes.”

Next morning I felt rather feverish, and dear fat little Mrs. Venn was quite frightened about me. ”If you go down again to Liguanca with this fever on you, my dear,” she said, ”you'll get yellow Jack as soon as you are home again. Better write and ask your mamma to let you stop a fortnight with us here.”

I consented, readily enough, for, of course, no girl of eighteen ever in her heart objects to military society, and the 99th were really very pleasant well-intentioned young fellows. But I made up my mind that if I stayed I would take particular care to see no more of Mr. Carvalho. He was very clever, very fascinating, very nice, but then--he was a brown man! That was a bar that no West Indian girl could ever be expected to get over.

As ill-luck would have it, however--I write as I then felt--about three days after, Mrs. Venn said to me, ”I've invited Mr. Cameron, one of our sub-lieutenants, to dine this evening, and I've had to invite his guest, young Carvalho, as well. By the way, Edie, if I were you, I wouldn't talk quite so much as you did the other evening to Mr. Carvalho. You know, dear, though he doesn't look it, he's a brown man.”

”I didn't know it,” I answered, ”till the end of the evening, and then Harry Verner told me. I wouldn't have danced with him more than once if I'd known it.”

”Wonderful how that young fellow has managed to edge himself into society,” said the major, looking up from his book; ”devilish odd. Son of old Jacob Carvalho: Jacob left him all his coin, not very much; picked up his ABC somewhere or other; got into Government service; asked to Governor's dances; goes everywhere now. Can't understand it.”

”Well, my dear,” says Mrs. Venn, ”why do we ask him ourselves?”

”Because we can't help it,” says the major, testily. ”Cameron goes and picks him up; ought to be in the Engineers, Cameron; too doocid clever for the line and for this regiment. Always picks up some astronomer fellow, or some botanist fellow, or some fellow who understands fortification or something. Compet.i.tive examination's ruin of the service. Get all sorts of people into the regiment now. Believe Cameron himself lives upon his pay almost, hanged if I don't.”

That evening, Mr. Carvalho came, and I liked him better than ever. Mr.

Cameron, who was a brother botanist and a nice ingenuous young Highlander, made him bring his portfolio of Jamaica ferns and flowers, the loveliest things I ever saw--dried specimens and water-colour sketches to accompany them of the plants themselves as they grew naturally. He told us all about them so enthusiastically, and of how he used to employ almost all his holidays in the mountains hunting for specimens. ”I'm afraid the fellows at the office think me a dreadful m.u.f.f for it,” he said, ”but I can't help it, it's born in me. My mother is a descendant of Sir Hans Sloane's, who lived here for several years--the founder of the British Museum, you know--and all her family have always had a taste for bush, as the negroes call it. You know, a good many mulatto people have the blood of able English families in their veins, and that accounts, I believe, for their usual high average of general intelligence.”

<script>