CHAPTER XV.
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!’