sense of the demands of the situation, as she answered once more in her
coldest tone: ‘My father is getting on as well as we can expect, thank
you, Mr Tom Dupuy. We are much obliged to you for your kind inquiries.
He slept the night pretty well, all things considered, and is partially
conscious again this morning. He was very nearly killed last night, as
you say; and if it hadn’t been for Mr Noel and Mr Hawthorn, who kindly
came up at once and tried to protect us, he would have been killed
outright, and I with him. But Mr Noel and Mr Hawthorn had happily
no vacuum pans and no trash-houses to engage their first and chief
attention.’
Tom Dupuy sneered visibly. ‘Hm!’ he said. ‘Two coloured fellows! Upon
my conscience! the Dupuys of Trinidad must be coming down in the world,
it seems, when they have to rely for help in a nigger rising upon two
coloured fellows.’
‘If they’d had to rely upon white men like you,’ Nora answered angrily,
flushing crimson as she spoke, ‘they’d have been burnt last night upon
the ashes of the cane-house, and not a soul would have stirred a hand
or foot to save them or protect them.’
Tom laughed to himself a sharp, short, malicious laugh. ‘Ha, ha!’ he
said, ‘my fine English-bred lady, so that’s the way the wind blows,
is it? I may be a fool, and I know you think me one’—Nora bowed
immediately a sarcastic acquiescence—‘but I’m not such a fool as not
to see through a woman’s face into a woman’s mind like an open window.
I heard that that woolly-headed Hawthorn man had been over here and
made a most cowardly time-serving speech to the confounded niggers,
giving way to all their preposterous demands in the most outrageous
and ridiculous fashion; but I didn’t hear that the other coloured
fellow—your fine-spoken English friend Noel’—he hissed the words out
with all the concentrated strength of his impotent hatred—‘had been
up here too, to put his own finger into the pie when the crust was
burning. Just like his impudence! the conceited coxcomb!’
‘Mr Noel is lying inside, in our own house here, this very moment,
dangerously wounded,’ Nora cried, her face now like a crimson peony;
‘and he was cut down by the negroes last night, standing up bravely,
alone and single-handed, with no weapon but a little riding-whip,
facing those mad rebels like an angry tiger, and trying to protect me
from their insults and their cutlasses; while you, sir, were stopping
snugly away down at Pimento Valley, looking carefully after your canes
and your vacuum pans. Tom Dupuy, if you dare to say another word, now
or ever, in my hearing against the man who tried to save my life from
those wild wretches at the risk of his own, as sure as I’m standing
here, sir, I give you fair notice I’ll chastise you myself, as soon
as I’ll look at you, you cowardly backbiter!—And now, Mr Dupuy,
good-morning.’
Tom saw the game was fairly up and his hand outwitted. It was no use
arguing with her any longer. ‘When she’s in this humour,’ he said
to himself philosophically, ‘you might as well try to reason with a
wounded lioness.’ So he whistled carelessly for Slot to fellow, lifted
his hat as politely as he was able—he didn’t pretend to all these fine
new-fangled town-bred ways of Harry Noel’s—jumped with awkward agility
upon his chestnut pony, turned its head in the direction of Pimento
Valley, and delivered a parting Parthian shot from a safe distance,
just as he got beyond the garden gateway. ‘Good-by, Miss Nora,’ he
said then savagely, raising his hat a second time with sarcastic
courtesy: ‘good-bye for ever. This is our last meeting. And remember
that I always said you’d finish in the end, for all your fine English
education, in marrying a confounded woolly-headed brown man!’
CHAPTER XLV.
All day long, Mr Dupuy lay speechless and almost motionless on his
bed, faint with loss of blood, and hovering between life and death,
but gradually mending by imperceptible degrees, as Marian fancied.
The brain had been terribly shaken, and there were some symptoms of
stunning and concussion; but the main trouble was merely the excessive
drain on the vascular system from the long-continued and unchecked
bleeding. About mid-day, he became hot and feverish, with a full pulse,
beating unsteadily. Macfarlane, who had remained in the house all
night, ordered him at once a rough mixture of sal-volatile, bismuth,
and whisky. ‘And whatever ye do,’ he said emphatically, ‘don’t forget
the whisky—a good wine-glassful in half a pint of cold water.’
Mr Dupuy was raised in the bed to drink the mixture, which he swallowed
mechanically in a half-unconscious fashion; and then a bandage of
pounded ice was applied to his forehead, and leeches were hastily
sent for to Port-of-Spain to reduce the inflammation. Long before the
leeches had time to arrive, however, Nora, who was watching by his
bedside, observed that his eyes began to open more frequently than
before, and that gleams of reason seemed to come over them every now
and again for brief intervals. ‘Give him some more whisky,’ Macfarlane
said in his decided tone; ‘there’s nothing like it, nothing like it—in
these cases—especially for a man of Dupuy’s idiosyncrasy.’
At that moment Mr Dupuy’s lips moved feebly, and he tried to turn with
an effort on the pillow.
‘Hush, hush!’ Nora cried; ‘he wants to speak. He has something to tell
us. What is it he’s saying? Listen, listen!’
Mr Dupuy’s lips moved again, and a faint voice proceeded slowly from
the depths of his bosom: ‘Not fit to hold a candle to old Trinidad rum,
I tell you, doctor.’
Macfarlane rubbed his hand against his thigh with evident pleasure and
satisfaction. ‘He’s wrong there,’ he murmured, ‘undoubtedly wrong, as
every judicious person could easily tell him; but no matter. He’ll do
now, when once he’s got life enough left in him to contradict one. It
always does a Dupuy good to contradict other people. Let it be rum,
then—a wine-glassful of Mr Tom’s best stilling.’
Almost as soon as the rum was swallowed, Mr Dupuy seemed to mend
rapidly for the passing moment. He looked up and saw Nora. ‘That’s well
then,’ he said with a sigh, recollecting suddenly the last night’s
adventures. ‘So they didn’t kill you after all, Nora?’
Nora stooped down with unwonted tenderness and kissed him fervently.
‘No, papa,’ she said; ‘they didn’t; nor you either.’
Mr Dupuy paused for a moment; then he looked up a second time, and
asked, with extraordinary vehemence for an invalided man: ‘Is this
riot put down? Have they driven off the niggers? Have they taken the
ringleaders? Have they hanged Delgado?’
‘Hush, hush!’ Nora cried, a little appalled in her cooler mood, after
all that had happened, at this first savage outcry for vengeance. ‘You
mustn’t talk, papa; you mustn’t excite yourself. Yes, yes; the riot
is put down, and Delgado—Delgado is dead. He has met with his due
punishment.’
‘That’s well!’ Mr Dupuy exclaimed, with much gusto, in spite of his
weakness, rubbing his hands feebly underneath the bedclothes. ‘Serves
the villain right. I’m glad they’ve hanged him. Nothing on earth comes
up to martial law in these emergencies; and hang ’em on the spot, say
I, as fast as you catch ’em, red-handed! Flog ’em first, and hang ’em
afterwards!’
Marian looked down at him speechless, with a shudder of horror; but
Nora put her face between her hands, overwhelmed with awe, now her own
passion had burst itself out, at that terrible outburst of the old bad
barbaric spirit of retaliation. ‘Don’t let him talk so, dear,’ she
cried to Marian. ‘O Marian, Marian, I’m so ashamed of myself! I’m so
ashamed of us all—us Dupuys, I mean; I wish we were all more like you
and Mr Hawthorn.’
‘You must not speak, Mr Dupuy,’ Macfarlane said, interposing gently,
with his rough-and-ready Scotch tenderness. ‘Ye’re not strong enough
for conversation yet, I’m thinking. Ye must just take a wee bit sleep
till the fever’s reduced. Ye’ve had a narrow escape of your life, my
dear sir; and ye must not excite yourself the minute ye’re getting a
trifle better.’
The old man lay silent for a few minutes longer; then he turned again
to Nora, and without noticing Marian’s presence, said more vehemently
and more viciously than ever: ‘I know who set them on to this, Nora.
It wasn’t their own doing; it was coloured instigation. They were put
up to it—I know they were put up to it—by that scoundrel Hawthorn—a
seditious, rascally, malevolent lawyer, if ever there was one. I hope
they’ll hang him too—he deserves it soundly—flog him and hang him as
soon as they catch him!’
‘O papa, papa!’ Nora cried, growing hotter and redder in the face than
ever, and clutching Marian’s hand tightly in an agony of distress and
shamefacedness, ‘you don’t know what you’re saying! You don’t know what
you owe to him! It was Mr Hawthorn who finally pacified and dispersed
the negroes; and if it hadn’t been for his coolness and his bravery, we
wouldn’t one of us have been alive to say so this very minute!’
Mr Dupuy coughed uneasily, and muttered to himself once more in a
vindictive undertone: ‘Hang him when they catch him!—hang him when
they catch him! I’ll speak to the governor about it myself, and prove
to him conclusively that if it hadn’t been for this fellow Hawthorn,
the niggers’d never have dreamed of kicking up such a hullabaloo and
bobbery!’
‘But, papa,’ Nora began again, her eyes full of tears, ‘you don’t
understand. You’re all wrong about it. If it hadn’t been for that dear,
good, brave Mr Hawthorn’——
Marian touched her lightly on the shoulder. ‘Never mind about it, Nora,
darling,’ she whispered consolingly, with a womanly caress to the poor
shrinking girl at her elbow; ‘don’t trouble him with the story now.
By-and-by, when he’s better, he’ll come to hear the facts; and then
he’ll know what Edward’s part was in the whole matter. Don’t distress
yourself about it, darling, now, after all that has happened. I know
your father’s feelings too well to take amiss anything he may happen to
say in the heat of the moment.’
‘If you speak another word before six o’clock, to-night, Dupuy,’
Macfarlane put in with stern determination, ‘I’ll just clear every
soul that knows ye out of the room at once, and leave you alone to the
tender mercies of old Aunt Clemmy. Turn over on your side, man, when
your doctor tells ye to, and try to get a little bit of refreshing
sleep before the evening.’
Mr Dupuy obeyed in a feeble fashion; but he still muttered doggedly to
himself as he turned over: ‘Catch him and hang him! Prove it to the
governor!’
As he spoke, Edward beckoned Marian out into the drawing-room through
the open door, to show her a note which had just been brought to him
by a mounted orderly. It was a few hasty lines, written in pencil,
that very morning by the governor himself, thanking Mr Hawthorn in
his official capacity for his brave and conciliatory conduct on the
preceding evening, whereby a formidable and organised insurrection had
been nipped in the bud, and a door left open for future inquiry, and
redress of any possible just grievances on the part of the rioters and
discontented negroes. ‘It is to your firmness and address alone,’ the
governor wrote, ‘that the white population of the island of Trinidad
owes to-day its present security from fire and bloodshed.’
Meanwhile, preparations had been made for preventing any possible fresh
outbreak of the riot that evening; and soldiers and policemen were
arriving every moment at the smouldering site of the recent fire, and
forming a regular plan of defence against the remote chance of a second
rising. Not that any such precautions were really necessary; for the
negroes, deprived of their head in Delgado, were left utterly without
cohesion or organisation; and Edward’s promise to go to England and
see that their grievances were properly ventilated had had far more
effect upon their trustful and excitable natures than the display
of ten regiments of soldiers in marching order could possibly have
produced. The natural laziness of the negro mind, combining with their
confidence in the young judge, and their fervent faith in the justice
of Providence under the most apparently incongruous circumstances,
had made them all settle down at once into their usual listless
_laissez-faire_ condition, as soon as the spur of Delgado’s fiery
energy and exhortation had ceased to stimulate them. ‘It all right,’
they chattered passively among themselves. ‘Mistah Hawtorn gwine to
’peak to Missis Queen fur de poor naygur; an’ de Lard in hebben gwine
to watch ober him, an’ see him doan’t suffer no more wrong at de heavy
hand ob de proud buckra.’
When the time arrived to make preparations for the night’s watching
and nursing, Nora came to Marian once more with her spirit vexed by
a sore trouble. ‘My dear,’ she said, ‘this is a dreadful thing about
poor Mr Noel having to go on stopping here. It’s very unfortunate he
couldn’t have been nursed through his illness at your house or at
Captain Castello’s. He’ll be down in bed for at least a week or two, in
all probability; and it won’t be possible to move him out of this until
he’s better.’
‘Well, darling?’ Marian answered, with an inquiring smile.
‘Well, you see, Marian, it wouldn’t be so awkward, of course, if poor
papa wasn’t ill too, because then, if I liked, I could go over and stop
with you at Mulberry until Mr Noel was quite recovered. But as I shall
have to stay here, naturally, to nurse papa, why’——
‘Why, what then, Nora?’
Nora hesitated. ‘Why, you see, darling,’ she went on timidly at last,
‘people will say that as I’ve helped to nurse Mr Noel through a serious
illness’——
‘Yes, dear?’
‘O Marian, don’t be so stupid! Of course, in that case, everybody’ll
expect me—to—to—accept him.’
Marian looked down deep into her simple, little, girlish eyes with a
curious smile of arch womanliness. ‘And why not, Nora?’ she asked at
last with perfect simplicity.
Nora blushed. ‘Marian—Marian—dear Marian,’ she said at length, after a
long pause, ‘you are so good—you are so kind—you are so helpful to me.
I wish I could say to you all I feel, but I can’t; and even if I did,
you couldn’t understand it—you couldn’t fathom it. You don’t know what
it is, Marian, to be born a West Indian with such a terrible load of
surviving prejudices. O darling, darling, we are all so full of wicked,
dreadful, unjust feelings! I wish I could be like you, dear, I wish
indeed I could; but I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, somehow!’
Marian stroked her white little hand with sisterly tenderness in
perfect silence for a few minutes; then she said, rather reproachfully:
‘So you wish Mr Noel wasn’t going to be nursed under your father’s roof
at all, Nora! That’s a very poor return, isn’t it, my darling, for all
his bravery and heroism and devotion?’
Nora drew back like one bitten suddenly by a venomous creature, and
putting her hand in haste on her breast, as if it pained her terribly,
answered, with a little deep-drawn sigh: ‘It isn’t that, Marian—it
isn’t that, darling. You know what it is, dear, as well as I do. Don’t
say it’s that, my sweet; oh, don’t say it’s that, or you’ll kill me,
you’ll kill me with remorse and anger! You’ll make me hate myself,
if you say I’m ungrateful. But I’m not ungrateful, Marian—I’m not
ungrateful. I admire, and—and love him; yes, I love him, for the way
he acted here last evening.’ And as she spoke, she buried her head
fervidly, with shame and fear, in Marian’s bosom.
Marian smoothed her hair tenderly for a few minutes longer, this time
again in profound silence, and then she spoke once more very softly,
almost at Nora’s ear, in a low whisper. ‘I went this morning into Mr
Noel’s room,’ she said, ‘darling, just when he was first beginning to
recover consciousness; and as he saw me, he turned his eyes up to me
with a beseeching look, and his lips seemed to be moving, as if he
wanted ever so much to say something. So I stooped down and listened to
catch the words he was trying to frame in his feverish fashion. He said
at first just two words—“Miss Dupuy;” and then he spoke again, and said
one only—“Nora.” I smiled, and nodded at him to tell him it was all
well; and he spoke again, quite audibly: “Have they hurt her? Have they
hurt her?” I said: “No; she’s as well as I am!” and his eyes seemed to
grow larger as I said it, and filled with tears; and I knew what he
meant by them, Nora—I knew what he meant by them. A little later, he
spoke to me again, and he said: “Mrs Hawthorn, I may be dying; and if
I die, tell her—tell Nora—that last night, when she stood beside me
there so bravely, I loved her, I loved her better even than I had ever
loved her!” He won’t die, Nora; but still I’ll break his confidence,
darling, and tell it you this evening.—O Nora, Nora! you say you wish
to goodness you hadn’t got all these dreadful, wicked, West Indian
feelings. You’re brave enough—I know that—no woman braver. Why don’t
you have the courage to break through them, then, and come away with
Edward and me to England, and accept poor Mr Noel, who would gladly
give his very life a thousand times over for you, darling?’
Nora burst into tears once more, and nestled, sobbing, closer and
closer upon Marian’s shoulder.
‘My darling,’ she cried, ‘I’m too wicked! I only wish I could feel as
you do!’
SWIMMING.
The extent to which the power of swimming is cultivated amongst
Englishmen is scarcely creditable to the citizens of a country which
boasts both that it is the greatest naval power, and that it possesses
infinitely the largest mercantile marine on the face of the earth.
It is only within recent years that it has been anything but a rare
exception for a sailor to be able to swim. Amongst old naval officers
it is still remembered as a notable occurrence that some fifty years
ago, Lord Ingestre, when in command of a ship on the Mediterranean
station, refused to rate as an able seaman any man who could not swim,
and that from time to time other captains followed his example. That
this should be still recalled to mind shows how rare an accomplishment
swimming was amongst sailors in past times; and if this has now been
remedied in the royal navy, where, at the present day, swimming is
taught, a similar improvement has by no means taken place in the
mercantile marine, in which a seaman who can swim is still a curiosity.
Probably the same remark would apply to our ‘long-shore’ population,
to our lightermen and professional watermen, and to the inhabitants
of our numerous canal-boats. And yet English people of both sexes and
of the average type seem to take to the water as naturally as a duck.
The difference is that they delight to disport themselves on the waves
instead of in them. Every seaport, every suitable stretch of river,
every lake, has its Rowing Club; Cockneys, whose ideas of rowing
are original if not elegant, and whose notions of boat-management
constitute a minus quantity, make summer Sundays and the August Bank
Holiday hideous on the Thames in the neighbourhood of Hampton Court;
and if ’Arry takes his ’Arriet for a day’s excursion to some one of
the seaside resorts which they patronise, the enjoyment of both is
incomplete if they do not court the woes of sea-sickness by going for a
sail.
In face of this national taste for aquatic pursuits, it is a painfully
suggestive reflection that comparatively few Englishmen, and still
fewer Englishwomen, possess sufficient knowledge of swimming to save
their own lives if they were suddenly plunged into deep water, and
were called upon to support themselves for, perhaps, five minutes by
their own exertions. No doubt, the power of swimming is a far more
common accomplishment amongst men than it was a quarter of a century
ago. Swimming has shared in the athletic revival which has marked the
period, and has found its devotees amongst the practical adherents
of muscular Christianity; but if, as some seem to think, there are
not wanting signs that the rage for athletic pursuits has passed its
meridian, and has begun its decline, swimming will probably suffer,
in common with other sports, from the reaction. No doubt, too, our
changeful English climate, our cold waters, are against this particular
form of exercise. In the tideless, sun-warmed Mediterranean, in the
coral-bound lagoons of the Southern Ocean, or by the grove-clad banks
of Burmese rivers, swimming becomes both a luxury and a second nature.
Let those testify who remember the untrammelled urchins flinging
themselves from the bows of boats in Malta harbour to dive for and
secure the coins flung from the deck of some newly arrived vessel, or
disporting themselves day after day in the fetid, drain-polluted waters
of the Dockyard Creek. Let travellers bear witness who, with possibly
some humorous exaggeration, have told us how, in Burmah, toddling
infants can swim at least as soon as they can walk; and how a mother,
too busy for the time to look after her youngest born, will cheerfully
and confidently place it in the river, to amuse itself with its
playmates; and then, when she has leisure, will swim about among the
gamboling children until she has found her own and brought it to land.
In such a case as this there can be but little teaching; swimming must
come almost naturally—shall we say from hereditary instinct, developed
by the constant calls made upon it, and transmitted from generation to
generation?
The lower temperature of the sea, or of fresh water fully exposed to
the air, in our latitudes will doubtless always prevent Englishmen,
as a nation, from becoming expert swimmers; but the common-sense of
a people which prides itself on its possession of the quality should
suffice to evade or overcome this natural obstacle so far as to
release us from at least a large proportion of the grim death-tribute
which we pay every year to our national ignorance. To any one who
has noted the characteristic recklessness with which people intrust
themselves to frail craft with whose management they are ludicrously
unacquainted, it may perhaps be a matter for surprise that this tribute
is not more heavy than it is; but certainly not a few of the deaths
by drowning that go to swell our annual calendar of disasters can
only be properly called accidents if we extend the signification of
the word so as to include those misfortunes which, though unforeseen,
arise from perfectly preventable causes. The climate of Paris and the
north of France is not warmer than that of England, but the proportion
of Parisians—perhaps even of Frenchmen in general—who can swim is
certainly greater than that of Englishmen. When it was pointed out to
the librarian at Boulogne-sur-Mer that the library did not possess a
single work on swimming, he replied good-humouredly: ‘Ah! c’est comme
ça, Monsieur—on apprend naturellement ici;’ and in Thévenot’s _Art de
Nager, démontré par Figures, avec des Avis pour se baigner utilement_,
published in Paris in or about 1696, some of the plates represent
ladies swimming, and would thus seem to show that with Frenchwomen it
has been a custom for centuries. In the year 1859, Miss Powers, the
secretary to the Ladies’ National Association for the diffusion of
sanitary knowledge, published a twopenny pamphlet entitled, _Why do not
Women Swim?—a Voice from many Waters_; but the question thus propounded
was not satisfactorily answered, and an Englishwoman who can swim still
remains a rarity—how great a one, any one may easily ascertain for
himself by watching the small crowd that speedily assembles to watch a
lady-swimmer at any seaside resort.