"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 scum 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."