The talk went on for a while about such ordinary casual topics; and then at last Miss Euphemia happened to remark confidentially to Marian, that that very day her cousin, Mr Septimius Whitaker, had been married at eleven o’clock down at the cathedral.
‘Indeed,’ Marian said, with some polite show of interest. ‘And did you go to the wedding, Miss Whitaker?’
Miss Euphemia drew herself up with great dignity. She was a good-looking, buxom, round-faced, very negro-featured girl, about as dark in complexion as her brother the doctor, but much more decidedly thick-lipped and flat-nosed. ‘O no,’ she said, with every sign of offended prejudice. ‘We didn’t at all approve of de match me cousin Septimius was unhappily makin’. De lady, I regret to say, was a Sambo.’
‘A what?’ Marian inquired curiously.
‘A Sambo, a Sambo gal,’ Miss Euphemia replied in a shrill crescendo.
‘Oh, indeed,’ Marian assented in a tone which clearly showed she hadn’t the faintest idea of Miss Euphemia’s meaning.
‘A Sambo,’ Mr Whitaker the elder said, smiling, and coming to her rescue—‘a Sambo, Mrs Hawtorn, is one of de inferior degrees in de classified scale and hierarchy of colour. De offspring of an African and a white man is a mulatto—dat, madam, is my complexion. De offspring of a mulatto and a white man is a quadroon—dat is de grade immediately superior. But de offspring of a mulatto and a negress is a Sambo—dat is de class just beneat us. De cause of complaint alleged by de family against our nephew Septimius is dis—dat bein’ himself a mulatto—de very fust remove from de pure-blooded white man—he has chosen to ally himself in marriage wit a Sambo gal—de second and inferior remove in de same progression. De family feels dat in dis course Septimius has toroughly and irremediably disgraced himself.’
‘And for dat reason,’ added Miss Euphemia with stately coldness, ‘none of de ladies in de brown society of Trinidad have been present at dis morning’s ceremony. De gentlemen went, but de ladies didn’t.’
‘It seems to me,’ Dr Whitaker said, in a pained and humiliated tone, ‘that we oughtn’t to be making these absurd distinctions of minute hue between ourselves, but ought rather to be trying our best to break down the whole barrier of time-honoured prejudice by which the coloured race, as a race, is so surrounded.—Don’t you agree with me, Mr Hawthorn?’
‘Pho!’ Miss Euphemia exclaimed, with evident disgust. ‘Just listen to Wilberforce! He has no proper pride in his family or in his colour. He would go and shake hands wit any vulgar, dirty, nigger woman, I believe, as black as de poker; his ideas are so common!—Wilberforce, I declare, I’s quite ashamed of you!’