'In Cuba! Do you really come from Cuba? I have always fancied that Cuba must be an altogether charming place to live in—like Biarritz or Pau, don't you know, only further away. Do please tell me where it is, and what kind of a place.'
Geographically, Lady Kirkbank's mind was a blank. It was quite a revelation to her to find that Cuba was an island.
'It must be a lovely spot!' exclaimed the fervid creature. 'Let me see, now, what do we get from Cuba?—cigars—and—and tobacco. I suppose in Cuba everybody smokes?'
'Men, women, and children.'
'How delicious! Would that I were a Cuban! And the natives, are they nice?'
'There are no aborigines. The Indians whom Columbus found soon perished off the face of the island. European civilisation generally has that effect. But one of our most benevolent captain-generals provided us with an imported population of niggers.'
'How delightful. I have always longed to live among a slave population, dear submissive black things dressed in coral necklaces and feathers, instead of the horrid over-fed wretches we have to wait upon us. And if the aborigines were not wanted it was just as well for them to die out, don't you know,' prattled Lady Kirkbank.
'It was very accommodating of them, no doubt. Yet we could employ half a million of them, if we had them, in draining our swamps. Agriculture suffered by the loss of Indian labour.'
'I suppose they were like the creatures in Pizarro, poor dear yellow things with brass bracelets,' said Lady Kirkbank. 'I remember seeing Macready as Rolla when I was quite a little thing.'
And now the curtain rose for the last act.