The little boat was indulging in a two days’ rest at the Isthmus. It is a problem worthy of the superwoman to avoid a fellow-passenger on a small boat in port. The bearable space on board becomes limited to inches. The side nearest the quay affords nothing but coal-dust to breathe, the other side allows a small percentage of air to dilute the coal-dust. There is no scope for choice.
After-dinner, however, Miss Brown settled down to play chess with Albert. Chess with Miss Brown is a most satisfactory game, a crescendo of “Checks” leading to a triumphant “Mate” in a delightfully short time.
So the suffragette went on shore to listen to the band.
The Isthmus band is as gaudy in attire as it is sombre in complexion, and it plays to a stratum of society as striking to the eye as any in the world. The Isthmus is the centre of nigger fashion. Here, under the glare and the flare of a hot night in the season, you may see the effect of a layer of civilisation on an aboriginal worship of colour. Crimson, gold, and silver are the prevailing motifs. As to the coiffure of the ladies, for every plait to be found on a Trinity Island head there are half a dozen on the Isthmus. There is something uniquely wicked in the appearance of rouge and powder on a mahogany ground. The look of vice which the Parisian or London lady strives to attain by means of a shopful of cosmetics can be acquired by the lady-nigger with one dab of the flour-dredger. Once more I pause to ask when we may expect the decree that we must further conceal our incurable virtue by means of a complexion dyed copper colour.
There was a moon, and there were stars standing aloof in the sky; and there were many lights about the garden. There were shrill brass voices everywhere, and the band was playing that tune of resigned sentimentality, “My Old Kentucky Home.”
The suffragette felt slightly drunk. She had had a day of emotions, and it was an unusual and intoxicating experience for her to find her emotions escaping from the iron bound cask in which she kept them. She felt totally irresponsible, and when the priest came along, looking as conceited as the moon, and as sentimentally benign as the stars, she discovered a lunatic longing to tear the hat from his head and stamp upon it, to make him look a fool, to prick his pride; not because of any personal enmity—or so she thought—but because he seemed eternally on the side of sanity and of yesterday, and barred the path of young and mad modernity. She approached him.
The priest suddenly perceived in front of him a soul dangerously in need of salvation.
“My dear young lady, I have been seeking an opportunity for a quiet chat with you, yerce, yerce. Whatever you may think of me, I assure you that I am not the hard and inhuman man you think me. I should be only too thankful to be of service to you. Let us sit on that quiet seat, away from the crowd.”
“It is good of you to risk contamination,” said the suffragette.
“My calling leads me among the publicans and sinners,” said the priest. “It is not my business to divide the sheep from the goats.”