She had at one time fancied that Letts was fond of her, and she had
thought that her liking for him was no mere fancy. A young woman with
good looks and a pleasant manner and a young man with a career before
him are very apt to have fancies in respect to each other on the West
Coast of Africa, where good looks and pleasant manners are not to be met
with daily. Of course when Gertrude had gone home for some months, and
had met Major Minton, she became aware of the fact that her liking for
Letts was the merest fancy; and perhaps when she returned with the story
of her having promised (under certain conditions) to marry Major Minton,
Letts had also come to the conclusion that his feeling towards Miss Hope
was also a fancy. This is, however, not quite so certain. At any rate,
Letts and she had always been very good friends.
For half-an-hour she talked to him quite pleasantly at first, then quite
earnestly--didactically and sarcastically--on the subject of his foolish
prejudice. She called it foolish when she was pleasant, and she called
it contemptible when she ceased to be pleasant, on a matter which she,
for her part, thought had been long ago passed out of the region of
controversy. Surely a man of Mr Letts’ intelligence and observation
could not be serious in objecting to dine with Dr Koomadhi simply
because he chanced to be a negro.
But Mr Letts assured her that he was quite serious in the matter. He
didn’t pretend, he said, to be superior in point of intelligence or
power of observation to men who made no objection to meet on terms
of perfect equality the whole Ethiopian race; but he had had certain
experiences, he said, and so long as he retained a recollection of these
experiences he would decline to sit at the same table with Dr Koomadhi
or any of his race. Then it was that Mrs Minton ceased to be altogether
pleasant as to the phrases which she employed in order to induce Mr
Letts to change his mind.
“You are not the only one with experiences,” she said. “I have had
experience not merely of negroes generally, but of Dr Koomadhi in
particular, and, as I told you some time ago, I have reason to believe
him to be a generous, Christian gentleman. That is why I wish to do all
that is in my power to make him understand that I regard his possession
of the characteristics of a gentleman and a Christian as more than
placing him on a level with us. I feel that I am inferior to Dr Koomadhi
in those qualities which our religion teaches us to regard as noblest.”
“And I hope with all my soul that you will never have a different
experience of him,” said Letts.
“I know that I shall have no different experience of him,” said she,
with confidence in her pose and in her tone.
He made no reply to this. And then she went on to ask him some
interesting questions regarding the general design of the Maker of the
Universe, and His intention in respect of the negro; and though Letts
answered all to the best of his ability, he was not persuaded to accept
Mrs Minton’s invitation to dinner.
She was naturally very angry, and even went so far as to assure Mr Letts
that his refusal to accept the invitation which she offered him might be
prejudicial to his being offered any future invitations to dine at her
table--an assurance which he received without emotion.
She told her father of her failure, and though he shook his head with
due seriousness, yet he refrained from saying “I told you so.” But when
her husband heard that Letts would not be persuaded, he treated the
incident with a really remarkable degree of levity, declaring that if he
himself were independent, he would see Koomadhi and all the nigger race
sent to a region of congenial blackness before he would sit down to
dinner with the best of them. He thought Letts, however, something of
an ass for not swallowing his prejudices in a neighbourhood where there
were so few decent billiard-players. For himself, he said he would have
no objection to dine with bandits and cut-throats if they consented to
join in a good pool afterwards.
When Dr Koomadhi received his invitation to dine at the Residency--it
was in the handwriting of Mrs Minton--he smiled. His smiles worked at
low pressure in the daytime; he felt that he could not be too careful in
this respect; he might, if taken suddenly, be led on to smile naturally
in the presence of a man with a kodak, and where would he be then?
He smiled. He went to the drawer where he kept the curious stones, and
looked at them for some time, but without touching them. Then he went to
the drawer in which he kept the verses that he had written expressive
of the effect of Miss Hope’s eyes upon his soul. By a poetic licence he
assumed that he had a soul, and he liked to write about it: it gave him
an opportunity of making it the last word in a line following one that
ended with the word “control.” He read some of the pages, and honestly
believed that they were covered with poetry of the highest character.
He felt convinced that there was not another man in the whole Ashantee
country who could write as good poetry; and perhaps he was not wrong in
his estimate of his own powers, and the powers of his Ashantee brethren.
As he closed the door with a bang his face would have seemed to any
one who might have chanced to see it one mass of ivory. This effect,
startling though it was, was due merely to an incidental change of
expression. He had ceased to smile; his teeth were tightly closed, and
his lips had receded from them as a tidal wave recedes from the strand
of a coral island, disclosing an unsuspected reef. His lips hid in their
billowy depths the remainder of his face, and only that fearful double
ridge of locked teeth would have been visible to any one, had any one
been present.
The words that Dr Koomadhi managed to utter without unlocking his teeth
were undoubtedly suggestive of very strong feeling; but no literary
interest attaches to their repetition.
He seated himself at his desk--after an interval--and wrote a letter
which was rather over than under the demands made by politeness upon
a man who has been asked to dinner in a rather formal way. He said it
would give him the greatest pleasure to accept the most kind invitation
with which he had been honoured by the Commissioner and Mrs Minton; and
then he added a word or two, which an ordinary gentleman would possibly
have thought superfluous, regarding the pride which he felt at being the
recipient of such a distinction.
It could not be said, however, that there was anything in his mode
of conducting himself at the dinner-table that suggested any want of
familiarity on his part with the habits of good society. He did not eat
with his knife, though he might have done so without imperilling in any
degree the safety of his mouth, nor did he make any mistake regarding
his ice-pudding or his jelly. He also drank his champagne out of the
right glass, and he did not take it for granted that the water in his
finger-bowl was for any but external use.
As he lay back in his chair, with his serviette across his knees and a
cigarette between his fingers, discussing with the Commissioner,
with that mild forbearance which one assumes towards one’s host, the
political situation of the hour, when Mrs Minton had left the room, he
looked the picture of a model English gentleman--a silhouette picture.
He hoped that the Conservatives would not go to the country without
a programme. What were the leaders thinking of that they hadn’t
familiarised the country with the policy they meant to pursue should
they be returned to power? Home Rule for Ireland! Was there ever so
ridiculous a demand seriously made to the country? Why, the Irish were,
he assured his host, very little better than savages: he should know--he
had been in Ireland for close upon a fortnight. He had some amusing
Irish stories. He imitated the brogue of the peasantry. He didn’t say
it was unmusical; but Home Rule!... the idea was too ridiculous to be
entertained by any one who knew the people.
His political views were sound beyond a doubt. They were precisely the
views of the Commissioner and his son-in-law, and the green chartreuse
was velvety as it should be.
For this evening only Major Minton sang to his wife’s accompaniment
a sentimental song which dwelt upon the misery of meeting daily with
smiles a certain person, while his, the singer’s, heart was breaking. He
sang it with well-simulated feeling. One would never have thought that
there was a banjo in the house.
Then Mrs Minton sang a lovely Scotch song about a burn; but it turned
out that the burn was water and not fire, and the Commissioner dozed in
a corner.
At last Major Minton suggested a game of billiards, and the suggestion
was acted on without delay.
After playing a game with Dr Koomadhi, while her husband looked on
and criticised the strokes from the standpoint of a lenient if
discriminating observer, Mrs Minton said “goodnight”; she was tired, she
said, and she knew that her husband and Dr Koomadhi meant to play all
night, so she thought she might as well go soon as late.
Of course Dr Koomadhi entreated her not to leave them. They would, he
assured her, do anything to retain her; they would even play a four
game--abhorred of billiard-players--if she would stay. Her husband did
not join in the entreaties of their guest. He played tricky cannons
until she had left the room.