“Quite,” said Mr. Clutterbuck.
“I had such a curious conversation just now,” Lord Circumference was saying to Paul, “with your bandmaster over there. He asked me whether I should like to meet his sister-in-law; and when I said, ‘Yes, I should be delighted to,’ he said that it would cost a pound normally, but that he’d let me have special terms. What can he have meant, Mr. Pennyfoot?”
“ ’Pon my soul,” Colonel Sidebotham was saying to the Vicar, “I don’t like the look of that nigger. I saw enough of Fuzzy-Wuzzy in the Sudan—devilish good enemy and devilish bad friend. I’m going across to talk to Mrs. Clutterbuck. Between ourselves, I think Lady C. went a bit far. I didn’t see the race myself, but there are limits. …”
“Rain ain’t doin’ the turnip crop any good,” Lady Circumference was saying.
“No, indeed,” said Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde. “Are you in England for long?”
“Why, I live in England, of course,” said Lady Circumference.
“My dear, how divine! But don’t you find it just too expensive?”
This was one of Lady Circumference’s favourite topics, but somehow she did not feel disposed to enlarge on it to Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde with the same gusto as when she was talking to Mrs. Sidebotham and the Vicar’s wife. She never felt quite at ease with people richer than herself.
“Well, we all feel the wind a bit since the war,” she said briefly. “How’s Bobby Pastmaster?”
“Dotty,” said Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde, “terribly dotty, and he and Chokey don’t get on. You’ll like Chokey. He’s just crazy about England, too. We’ve been round all the cathedrals, and now we’re going to start on the country houses. We were thinking of running over to see you at Castle Tangent one afternoon.”
“That would be delightful, but I’m afraid we are in London at present. Which did you like best of the cathedrals, Mr. Chokey?”
“Chokey’s not really his name, you know. The angel’s called ‘Mr. Sebastian Cholmondley.’ ”
“Well,” said Mr. Cholmondley, “they were all fine, just fine. When I saw the cathedrals my heart just rose up and sang within me. I sure am crazy about culture. You folk think because we’re coloured we don’t care about nothing but jazz. Why, I’d give all the jazz in the world for just one little stone from one of your cathedrals.”
“It’s quite true. He would.”
“Well, that’s most interesting, Mr. Cholmondley. I used to live just outside Salisbury when I was a girl, but, little as I like jazz, I never felt quite as strongly as that about it.”
“Salisbury is full of historical interest, Lady Circumference, but in my opinion York Minster is the more refined.”
“Oh, you angel!” said Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde. “I could eat you up every bit.”
“And is this your first visit to an English school?” asked the Doctor.
“I should say not. Will you tell the Doctor the schools I’ve seen?”
“He’s been to them all, even the quite new ones. In fact, he liked the new ones best.”
“They were more spacious. Have you ever seen Oxford?”
“Yes, in fact, I was educated there.”
“Were you, now? I’ve seen Oxford and Cambridge and Eton and Harrow. That’s me all over. That’s what I like, see? I appreciate art. There’s plenty coloured people come over here and don’t see nothing but a few night clubs. I read Shakespeare,” said Chokey, “Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear. Ever read them?”
“Yes,” said the Doctor; “as a matter of fact, I have.”
“My race,” said Chokey, “is essentially an artistic race. We have the child’s love of song and colour and the child’s natural good taste. All you white folks despise the poor coloured man. …”
“No, no,” said the Doctor.
“Let him say his piece, the darling,” said Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde. “Isn’t he divine?”
“You folks all think the coloured man hasn’t got a soul. Anything’s good enough for the poor coloured man. Beat him; put him in chains; load him with burdens. …” Here Paul observed a responsive glitter in Lady Circumference’s eye. “But all the time that poor coloured man has a soul same as you have. Don’t he breathe the same as you? Don’t he eat and drink? Don’t he love Shakespeare and cathedrals and the paintings of the old masters same as you? Isn’t he just asking for your love and help to raise him from the servitude into which your forefathers plunged him? Oh, say, white folks, why don’t you stretch out a helping hand to the poor coloured man, that’s as good as you are, if you’ll only let him be?”
“My sweet,” said Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde, “you mustn’t get discouraged. They’re all friends here.”
“Is that so?” said Chokey. “Should I sing them a song?”
“No, don’t do that, darling. Have some tea.”
“I had a friend in Paris,” said the Clutterbuck governess, “whose sister knew a girl who married one of the black soldiers during the war, and you wouldn’t believe what he did to her. Joan and Peter, run and see if Daddy wants some more tea. He tied her up with a razor strop and left her on the stone floor for the night without food or covering. And then it was over a year before she could get a divorce.”
“Used to cut the tent ropes,” Colonel Sidebotham was saying, “and then knife the poor beggars through the canvas.”
“You can see ’em in Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road any night of the week,” Sam Clutterbuck was saying. “The women just hanging on to ’em.”
“The mistake was ever giving them their freedom,” said the Vicar. “They were far happier and better looked after before.”
“It’s queer,” said Flossie, “that a woman with as much money as Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde should wear such dull clothes.”
“That ring didn’t cost less than five hundred,” said Philbrick.
“Let’s go and talk to the Vicar about God,” said Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde. “Chokey thinks religion is just divine.”
“My race is a very spiritual one,” said Chokey.
“The band has been playing ‘Men of Harlech’ for over half an hour,” said the Doctor. “Diana, do
