CHAPTER XLVI.
The days went slowly, slowly on, and Mr Dupuy and Harry Noel both continued to recover steadily from their severe injuries. Marian came over every day to help with the nursing, and took charge for the most part, with Aunt Clemmy’s aid, of the young Englishman; while Nora’s time was chiefly taken up in attending to her father’s manifold necessities. Still at odd moments she did venture to help a little in taking care of poor Harry, whose gratitude for all her small attentions was absolutely unbounded, and very touching. True, she came comparatively seldom into the sickroom (for such in fact it was, the crushing blow on Harry’s head having been followed by violent symptoms of internal injury to the brain, which made his case far more serious in the end than Mr Dupuy’s); but whenever he woke up after a short doze, in his intervals of pain, he always found a fresh passion-flower, or a sweet white rosebud, or a graceful spray of clambering Martinique clematis, carefully placed in a tiny vase with pure water on the little table by the bedside; and he knew well whose dainty fingers had picked the pretty blossoms and arranged them so deftly, with their delicate background of lace-like wild West Indian maiden-hair, in the tiny bouquets. More than once, too, when Aunt Clemmy wasn’t looking, he took the white rosebuds out of the water for a single moment and gazed at them tenderly with a wistful eye; and when, one afternoon, Marian surprised him in the very act, as she came in with his regulation cup of chicken-broth at the half-hour, she saw that the colour rushed suddenly even into his brown and bloodless cheek, and his eyes fell like a boy’s as he replaced the buds with a guilty look in the vase beside him. But she said nothing about the matter at the time, only reserving it for Nora’s private delectation in the little boudoir half an hour later.
As Mr Dupuy got better, one firm resolve seemed to have imprinted itself indelibly upon his unbending nature—the resolve to quit Trinidad for ever at the very earliest moment, when convalescence and Macfarlane would combine to allow him. He would even sell Orange Grove itself, he said, and go over and live permanently for the rest of his days in England. ‘That is to say, in England for the summer,’ he observed casually to Nora; ‘for I don’t suppose any human being in his right senses would ever dream of stopping in such a wretched climate through a whole dreary English winter. In October, I shall always go to Nice, or Pau, or Mentone, or some other of these new-fashioned continental wintering-places that people go to nowadays in Europe; some chance, I suppose, of seeing the sun once and again there, at anyrate. But one thing I’ve quite decided upon: I won’t live any longer in Trinidad. I’m not afraid; but I object on principle to vivisection, especially conducted with a blunt instrument. At my time of life, a man naturally dislikes being cut up alive by those horrible cutlasses. You and your cousin Tom may stop here by yourselves and manage Pimento Valley, if you choose; but I decline any longer to be used as the corpus vile for a nigger experimentalist to exercise his skill upon. It doesn’t suit my taste, and I refuse to submit to it. The fact is, Nora, my dear, the island isn’t any longer a fit place for a gentleman to live in. It was all very well in the old days, before we got a pack of Exeter Hall demagogues, sent out here by the government of the day on purpose to excite our own servants to rebellion and insurrection against us. Nobody ever heard of the niggers rising or hacking one to pieces bodily in those days. But ever since this man Hawthorn, whose wife you’re so thick with—a thing that no lady would have dreamt of countenancing in the days before these new-fangled doctrines came into fashion—ever since this man Hawthorn was sent out here, preaching his revolutionary cut-throat principles broadcast, the island hasn’t been a fit place at all for a gentleman to live in; and I’ve made up my mind to leave it at once and go over to England.’
Meanwhile, events had arisen which rendered it certain that the revolutionary demagogue himself, who had saved Mr Dupuy’s life and all the other white lives in the entire island, would also have to go to England at a short notice. Edward had intended, indeed, in pursuance of his hasty promise to the excited negroes, to resign his judgeship, and return home, in order to confer with the Colonial Office on the subject of their grievances. But before he had time to settle his affairs and make arrangements for his approaching departure, a brisk interchange of messages had taken place between the Trinidad government and the home authorities. Meetings had been held in London at which the whole matter had been thoroughly ventilated; questions had been asked and answered in parliament; and the English papers had called unanimously for a thorough sifting of the relations between the planters and the labourers throughout the whole of the West India Islands. In particular, they had highly praised the courage and wisdom with which young Mr Hawthorn had stepped into the breach at the critical moment, and single-handed, averted a general massacre, by his timely influence with the infuriated rioters. More than one paper had suggested that Mr Hawthorn should be forthwith recalled, to give evidence on the subject before a Select Committee; and as a direct result of that suggestion, Edward shortly after received a message from the Colonial Secretary, summoning him to London immediately, with all despatch, on business connected with the recent rising of the negroes in Trinidad.
Mr Dupuy had already chosen the date on which he should sail; but when he heard that ‘that man Hawthorn’ had actually taken a passage by the same steamer, he almost changed his mind, for the first time in his life, and half determined to remain in the island, now that it was to be freed at last from the polluting presence and influence of this terrible fire-eating brown revolutionist. Perhaps, he thought, when once Hawthorn was gone, Trinidad might yet be a place fit for a gentleman to live in. The Dupuys had inhabited Orange Grove, father and son, for nine generations; and it would be a pity indeed if they were to be driven away from the ancestral plantations by the meddlesome interference of an upstart radical coloured lawyer.
In this dubitative frame of mind, then, Mr Dupuy, as soon as ever Macfarlane would allow him to mount his horse again, rode slowly down from Orange Grove to pay a long-meditated call at Government House upon His Excellency the governor. In black frock-coat and shiny silk hat, as is the rigorous etiquette upon such occasions, even under a blazing tropical noontide, he went his way with a full heart, ready to pour forth the vials of his wrath into the sympathetic ears of the Queen’s representative against this wretched intriguer Hawthorn, by whose Machiavellian machinations (Mr Dupuy was justly proud in his own mind of that sonorous alliteration) the happy and contented peasantry of the island of Trinidad had been spurred and flogged and slowly roused into unwilling rebellion against their generous and paternal employers.
Judge of his amazement, therefore, when, after listening patiently to his long and fierce tirade, Sir Adalbert rose from his chair calmly, and said in a clear and distinct voice these incredible words: ‘Mr Dupuy, you unfortunately quite mistake the whole nature of the situation. This abortive insurrection is not due to Mr Hawthorn or to any other one person whatever. It has long been brewing; we have for months feared and anticipated it; and it is the outcome of a widespread and general discontent among the negroes themselves, sedulously fostered, we are afraid’—here Mr Dupuy’s face began to brighten with joyous anticipation—‘by the unwise and excessive severity of many planters, both in their public capacity as magistrates, and in their private capacity as employers of labour.’ (Here Mr Dupuy’s face first fell blankly, and then pursed itself up suddenly in a perfectly comical expression of profound dismay and intense astonishment.) ‘It is to Mr Hawthorn alone,’ the governor went on, glancing severely at the astounded planter, ‘that many unwise proprietors of estates in the island of Trinidad owe their escape from the not wholly unprovoked anger of the insurgent negroes; and so highly do the home authorities value Mr Hawthorn’s courage and judgment in this emergency, that they have just summoned him back to England, to aid them with his advice and experience in settling a new modus vivendi to be shortly introduced between negroes and employers.’
Mr Dupuy never quite understood how he managed to reel out of the governor’s drawing-room without fainting, from sheer astonishment and horror; or how he managed to restrain his legs from lifting up his toes automatically against the sacred person of the Queen’s representative. But he did manage somehow to stagger down the steps in a dazed and stupefied fashion, much as he had staggered along the path when he felt Delgado hacking him about the body at the blazing cane-houses; and he rode back home to Orange Grove, red in the face as an angry turkey-cock, more convinced than ever in his own mind that Trinidad was indeed no longer a fit place for any gentleman of breeding to live in. And in spite of Edward’s having taken passage by the same ship, he determined to clear out of the island, bag and baggage, at the earliest possible opportunity.
As for Harry Noel, he, too, had engaged a berth quite undesignedly in the self-same steamer. Even though he had rushed up to Orange Grove in the first flush of the danger to protect Nora and her father, if possible, from the frantic rioters, it had of course been a very awkward position for him to find himself an unwilling and uninvited guest in the house which he had last quitted under such extremely unpleasant circumstances. Mr Dupuy, indeed, though he admitted, when he heard the whole story, that Harry had no doubt behaved ‘like a very decent young fellow,’ could not be prevailed upon to take any notice of his unbidden presence, even by sending an occasional polite message of inquiry about his slow recovery from the adjoining bedroom. So Harry was naturally anxious to get away from Orange Grove as quickly as possible, and he had made up his mind that before he went he would not again ask Nora to reconsider her determination. His chivalrous nature shrank from the very appearance of trading upon her gratitude for his brave efforts to save her on the evening of the outbreak; if she would not accept him for his own sake, she should not accept him for the sake of the risk he had run to win her.
The first day when Harry was permitted to move out under the shade of the big star-apple tree upon the little grass plot, where he sat in a cushioned bamboo chair beside the clump of waving cannas, Nora came upon him suddenly, as if by accident, from the Italian terrace, with a bunch of beautiful pale-blue plumbago and a tall spike of scented tuberose in her dainty, gloveless, little fingers. ‘Aren’t they beautiful, Mr Noel?’ she said, holding them up to his admiring gaze—admiring them, it must be confessed, a trifle obliquely. ‘Did you ever in your life see anything so wildly lovely in a stiff, tied-up, staircase conservatory over yonder in dear old England?’
‘Never,’ Harry Noel answered, with his eyes fixed rather on her blushing face than on the luscious pale white tuberose. ‘I shall carry away with me always the most delightful reminiscences of beautiful Trinidad and of its lovely—flowers.’
Nora noticed at once the significant little pause before the last word, and blushed again, even deeper than ever. ‘Carry away with you?’ she said regretfully, echoing his words—‘carry away with you? Then do you mean to leave the island immediately?’
‘Yes, Miss Dupuy—immediately; by the next steamer. I’ve written off this very morning to the agents at the harbour to engage my passage.’
Nora’s heart beat violently within her. ‘So soon!’ she said. ‘How very curious! And how very fortunate, too, for I believe papa has taken berths for himself and me by the very same steamer. He’s gone to-day to call on the governor; and when he comes back, he’s going to decide at once whether or not we are to leave the island immediately for ever.’
‘Very fortunate? You said very fortunate? How very kind of you. Then you’re not altogether sorry, Miss Dupuy, that we’re going to be fellow-passengers together?’
‘Mr Noel, Mr Noel! How can you doubt it?’
Harry’s heart beat that moment almost as fast as Nora’s own. In spite of his good resolutions—which he had made so very firmly too—he couldn’t help ejaculating fervently: ‘Then you forgive me, Miss Dupuy! You let bygones be bygones! You’re not angry with me any longer!’
‘Angry with you, Mr Noel—angry with you! You were so kind, you were so brave! how could I ever again be angry with you!’
Harry’s face fell somewhat. After all, then, it was only gratitude. ‘It’s very good of you to say so,’ he faltered out tremulously—‘very good of you to say so. I—I—I shall always remember—my—my visit to Orange Grove with the greatest pleasure.’
‘And so shall I,’ Nora added in a low voice, hardly breathing; and as she spoke, the tears filled her eyes to overflowing.
Harry looked at her once more tenderly. How beautiful and fresh she was, really! He looked at her, and longed just once to kiss her. Nora’s hand lay close to his. He put out his own fingers, very tentatively, and just touched it, almost as if by accident. Nora drew it half away, but not suddenly. He touched it again, a little more boldly this time, and Nora permitted him, unreproving. Then he looked hard into her averted tearful eyes, and said tenderly the one word, ‘Nora!’
Nora’s hand responded faintly by a slight pressure, but she answered nothing.
‘Nora,’ the young man cried again, with sudden energy, ‘if it is love, take me, take me. But if it is only—only the recollection of that terrible night, let me go, let me go, for ever!’
Nora held his hand fast in hers with a tremulous grasp, and whispered in his ear, almost inaudibly: ‘Mr Noel, it is love—it is love! I love you—indeed I love you!’
When Macfarlane came his rounds that evening to see his patients he declared that Harry Noel’s pulse was decidedly feverish, and that he must have been somehow over-exciting himself; so he ordered him back again ruthlessly to bed at once till further notice.