A fortnight after Nora’s arrival in Trinidad, Mr Tom Dupuy, neatly
dressed in all his best, called over one evening at Orange Grove for
the express purpose of speaking seriously with his pretty cousin. Mr
Tom had been across to see her more than once already, to be sure,
and had condescended to observe to many of his men acquaintances, on
his return from his call, that Uncle Theodore’s girl, just come out
from England, was really in her own way a most elegant and attractive
creature. In Mr Tom’s opinion, she would sit splendidly at the head
of the table at Pimento Valley. ‘A man in my position in life wants a
handsome woman, you know,’ he said, ‘to do the honours, and keep up the
dignity of the family, and look after the women-servants, and all that
sort of thing; so Uncle Theodore and I have arranged beforehand that it
would be a very convenient plan if Nora and I were just to go and make
a match of it.’
With the object of definitely broaching this preconcerted harmony
to his unconscious cousin, Mr Tom had decked himself in his very
smartest coat and trousers, stuck a _gloire de Dijon_ rose in his top
button-hole, mounted his celebrated gray Mexican pony ‘Sambo Gal,’ and
ridden across to Orange Grove in the cool of the evening.
Nora was sitting by herself with her cup of tea in the little boudoir
that opened out on to the terrace garden, with its big bamboos and
yuccas and dracœna trees, when Mr Tom Dupuy was announced by Rosina as
waiting to see her.
‘Show him in, Rosina,’ Nora said with a smile; ‘and ask Aunt Clemmy to
send me up another teacup.—Good-evening, Tom. I’m afraid you’ll find it
a little dull here, as it happens, this evening, for papa’s gone down
to Port-of-Spain on business; and so you’ll have nobody to talk with
you to-night about the prospects of the year’s sugar-crop.’
Tom Dupuy seated himself on the ottoman beside her with cousinly
liberty. ‘Oh, it don’t matter a bit, Nora,’ he answered with his own
peculiar gallantry. ‘I don’t mind. In fact, I came over on purpose this
evening, knowing Uncle Theodore was out, because I’d got something very
particular I wanted to talk over with you in private.’
‘In-deed,’ Nora answered emphatically. ‘I’m surprised to hear
it. I assure you, Tom, I’m absolutely ignorant on the subject of
cane-culture.’
‘Girls brought up in England mostly are,’ Tom Dupuy replied with the
air of a man who generously makes a great concession. ‘They don’t
appear to feel much interest in sugar, like other people. I suppose
in England there’s nothing much grown except corn and cattle.—But
that wasn’t what I came over to talk about to-night, Nora. I’ve got
something on my mind that Uncle Theodore and I have been thinking over,
and I want to make a proposition to you about it.’
‘Well, Tom?’
‘Well, Nora, you see, it’s like this. As you know, Orange Grove is
Uncle Theodore’s to leave; and after his time, he’ll leave it to
you, of course; but Pimento Valley’s entailed on me; and that being
so, Uncle Theodore lets me have it on lease during his lifetime, so
that, of course, whatever I spend upon it in the way of permanent
improvements is really spent in bettering what’s practically as good as
my own property.’
‘I understand. Quite so.—Have a cup of tea?’
‘Thank you.—Well, Pimento Valley, you know, is one of the very best
sugar-producing estates in the whole island. I’ve introduced the patent
Browning regulators for the centrifugal process; and I’ve imported some
of these new Indian mongooses that everybody’s talking about, to kill
off the cane-rats; and I’ve got some splendid stock rattoons over from
Mauritius; and altogether, a finer or more creditable irrigated estate
I don’t think you’ll find—though it’s me that says it—in the island of
Trinidad. Why, Nora, at our last boiling, I assure you the greater part
of the liquor turned out to be seventeen over proof; while the molasses
stood at twenty-nine specific gravity; giving a yield, you know, of
something like one hogshead decimal four on the average to the acre of
canes under cultivation.’
Nora held up her fan carelessly to smother a yawn. ‘I daresay it did,
Tom,’ she answered with obvious unconcern; ‘but, you know, I told you I
didn’t understand anything on earth about sugar; and you said it wasn’t
about that that you wanted to talk to me in private this evening.’
‘Yes, yes, Nora; you’re quite right; it isn’t. It’s about a far deeper
and more interesting subject than sugar that I’m going to speak to
you.’ (Nora mentally guessed it must be rum.) ‘I only mentioned these
facts, you see, just to show you the sort of yield we’re making now
at Pimento Valley. Last year, we did five hundred hogsheads, and two
hundred and eighty-four puncheons. A man who does a return like that,
of course, must naturally be making a very tidy round little income.’
‘I’m awfully glad to hear it, I’m sure, for your sake,’ Nora answered
unconcernedly.
‘I thought you would be, Nora; I was sure you would be. Naturally,
it’s a matter that touches us both very closely. You see, as you’re
to inherit Orange Grove, and as I’m to inherit Pimento Valley, Uncle
Theodore and I think it would be a great pity that the two old
estates—the estates bound up so intimately with the name and fame of
the fighting Dupuys—should ever be divided or go out of the family. So
we’ve agreed together, Uncle Theodore and I, that I should—well, that I
should endeavour to unite them by mutual arrangement.’
‘I don’t exactly understand,’ Nora said, as yet quite unsuspicious of
his real meaning.
‘Why, you know, Nora, a man can’t live upon sugar and rum alone.’
‘Certainly not,’ Nora interrupted; ‘even if he’s a confirmed drunkard,
it would be quite impossible. He must have something solid occasionally
to eat as well.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Tom said, in a sentimental tone, endeavouring to rise as
far as he was able to the height of the occasion. ‘And he must have
something more than that too, Nora: he must have sympathy; he must have
affection: he must have a companion in life; he must have somebody, you
know, to sit at the head of his table, and to—to—to’——
‘To pour out tea for him,’ Nora suggested blandly, filling his cup a
second time.
Tom reddened a little. It wasn’t exactly the idea he wanted, and he
began to have a faint undercurrent of suspicion that Nora was quietly
laughing at him in her sleeve. ‘Ah, well, to pour out tea for him,’ he
went on, somewhat suspiciously; ‘and to share his joys and sorrows, and
his hopes and aspirations’——
‘About the sugar-crop?’ Nora put in once more, with provoking calmness.
‘Well, Nora, you may smile if you like,’ Tom said warmly; ‘but this is
a very serious subject, I can tell you, for both of us. What I mean to
say is that Uncle Theodore and I have settled it would be a very good
thing indeed if we two were to get up a match between us.’
‘A match between you,’ Nora echoed in a puzzled manner—‘a match between
papa and you, Tom! What at? Billiards? Cricket? Long jumping?’
Tom fairly lost his temper. ‘Nonsense, Nora,’ he said testily. ‘You
know as well what I mean as I do. Not a match between Uncle Theodore
and me, but a match between you and me—the heir and heiress of Orange
Grove and Pimento Valley.’
Nora stared at him with irrepressible laughter twinkling suddenly out
of all the corners of her merry little mouth and puckered eyelids.
‘Between you and me, Tom,’ she repeated incredulously—‘between you and
me, did you say? Between you and me now? Why, Tom, do you really mean
this for a sort of an offhand casual proposal?’
‘Oh, you may laugh if you like,’ Tom Dupuy replied evasively, at
once assuming the defensive, as boors always do by instinct under
similar circumstances. ‘I know the ways of you girls that have been
brought up at highfalutin’ schools over in England. You think West
Indian gentlemen aren’t good enough for you, and you go running
after cavalry-officer fellows, or else after some confounded upstart
woolly-headed mulatto or other, who come out from England. I know the
ways of you. But you may laugh as you like. I see you don’t mean to
listen to me now; but you’ll have to listen to me in the end; for Uncle
Theodore and I have made up our minds about it, and what a Dupuy makes
up his mind about, he generally sticks to, and there’s no turning him.
So in the end, I know, Nora, you’ll have to marry me.’
‘You seem to forget,’ Nora said haughtily, ‘that I too am a Dupuy, as
much as you are.’
‘Ah, but you’re only a woman, and that’s very different. I don’t mind
a bit about your answering me _no_ to-day. It seems I’ve tapped the
puncheon a hit too early; that’s all: leave the liquor alone, and it’ll
mature of itself in time in its own cellar. Sooner or later, Nora, you
see if you don’t marry me.’
‘But, Tom,’ Nora cried, abashed into seriousness for a moment by his
sudden outburst of native vulgarity, ‘this is really so unexpected and
so ridiculous. We’re cousins, you know; I’ve never thought of you at
all in any way except as a cousin. I didn’t mean to be rude to you;
but your proposal and your way of putting it took me really so much by
surprise.’
‘Oh, if that’s all you mean,’ Tom Dupuy answered, somewhat mollified,
‘I don’t mind your laughing, no, not tuppence. All I mind is your
saying _no_ so straight outright to me. If you want time to consider’——
‘Never!’ Nora interrupted quickly in a sharp voice of unswerving
firmness.
‘Never, Nora? Never? Why never?’
‘Because, Tom, I don’t care for you; I can’t care for you; and I never
will care for you. Is that plain enough?’
Tom stroked his chin and looked at her dubiously, as a man looks at an
impatient horse of doubtful temper. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Nora, you’re a
fine one, you are—a very fine one. I know what this means. I’ve seen
it before lots of times. You want to marry some woolly-headed brown
man. I heard you were awfully thick with some of those people on board
the _Severn_. That’s what always comes of sending West Indian girls to
be educated in England. You’ll have to marry me in the end, though,
all the same, because of the property. But you just mark my words: if
you don’t marry me, as sure as fate, you’ll finish with marrying a
woolly-headed mulatto!’
Nora rose to her full height with offended dignity. ‘Tom Dupuy,’ she
said angrily, ‘you insult me! Leave the house, sir, this minute, or
I shall retire to my room. Get back to your sugar-canes and your
centrifugals until you’ve learned better manners.’
‘Upon my word,’ Tom said aloud, as if to himself, rising to go, and
flicking his boot carelessly with his riding-whip, ‘I admire her all
the more when she’s in a temper. She’s one of your high-steppers, she
is. She’s an uncommon fine girl, too—hanged if she isn’t—and, sooner or
later, she’ll have to marry me.’
Nora swept out of the boudoir without another word, and walked with
a stately tread into her own room. But before she got there, the
ludicrous side of the thing had once more overcome her, and she flung
herself on a couch in uncontrollable fits of childish laughter. ‘Oh,
Aunt Clemmy,’ she cried, ‘bring me my tea in here, will you? I really
think I shall die of laughing at Mr Tom there!’