‘It is,’ Mr Dupuy replied, taking the proffered glass of Madeira from his host as he answered. Old-fashioned wine-drinking hospitality still prevails largely in the West Indies. ‘I got my letters just as I was starting. Yours will be here before long, I don’t doubt, Mr Hawthorn. I had news, important news in my budget this morning. My daughter, sir, my daughter Nora, who has been completing her education in England, is coming out to Trinidad by the next steamer.’
‘You must be delighted at the prospect of seeing her,’ Mr Hawthorn answered with a slight sigh. ‘I only wish I were going as soon to see my dear boy Edward.’
Mr Dupuy’s lip curled faintly as he replied in a careless manner: ‘Ah, yes, to be sure. Your boy’s in England, Mr Hawthorn, isn’t he? If I recollect right, you sent him to Cambridge.—Ah, yes, I thought so, to Cambridge. A very excellent thing for you to do with him. If you take my advice, my dear sir, you’ll let him stop in the old country—a much better place for him in every way, than this island.’
‘I mean to,’ Mr Hawthorn answered in a low voice. ‘God forbid that I should ever be a party to bringing him out here to Trinidad.’
‘Oh, certainly not—certainly not. I quite agree with you. Far better for him to stop where he is, and take his chance of making a living for himself in England. Not that he can be at any loss in that matter either. You must be in a position to make him very comfortable too, Mr Hawthorn! Fine estate, Agualta, and turns out a capital brand of rum and sugar.’
‘Best vacuum-pan and centrifugal in the whole island,’ Tom Dupuy put in parenthetically. ‘Turned out four hundred and thirty-four hogsheads of sugar and three hundred and ninety puncheons of rum last season—largest yield of any estate in the Windward Islands except Mount Arlington. You don’t catch me out of it in any matter where sugar’s in question, I can tell you.’
‘But my daughter, Mr Hawthorn,’ the elder Dupuy went on, smiling, and sipping his Madeira in a leisurely fashion—‘my daughter means to come out to join me by the next steamer; and my nephew Tom and I are naturally looking forward to her approaching arrival with the greatest anxiety. A young lady in Miss Dupuy’s position, I need hardly say to you, who has been finishing her education at a good school in England, comes out to Trinidad under exceptionally favourable circumstances. She will have much here to interest her in society, and we hope she will enjoy herself and make herself happy.’
‘For my part,’ Tom Dupuy put in brusquely, ‘I don’t hold at all with this sending young women from Trinidad across the water to get educated in England—not a bit of it. What’s the good of it?—that’s what I always want to know—what’s the good of it? What do they pick up there, I should like to hear, except a lot of trumpery fal-lal, that turns their heads, and fills them brimful of all sorts of romantic topsy-turvy notions? I’ve never been to England myself, thank goodness, and what’s more, I don’t ever want to go, that’s certain. But I’ve known lots of fellows that have been, and have spent no end of a heap of money over their education too, at one place or another—I don’t even know the names of ’em—and when they’ve come back, so far as I could see, they’ve never known a bit more about rum or sugar than other fellows that had never set foot for a single minute outside the island—no, nor for that matter, not so much either. Of course, it’s all very well for a person in your son’s position, Mr Hawthorn; that’s quite another matter. He’s gone to England, and he’s going to stay there. If I were he, I should do as he does. But what on earth can be the use of sending a girl in my cousin Nora’s station in life over to England, just on purpose to set her against her own flesh and blood and her own people? Why, it really passes my comprehension.’
Mr Dupuy’s forehead puckered slightly as Tom spoke, and the corners of his mouth twitched ominously; but he answered in a tone of affected nonchalance: ‘It’s a pity, Mr Hawthorn, that my nephew Tom should take this unfavourable view of an English education, because, you see, it’s our intention, as soon as my daughter Miss Dupuy arrives from England, to arrange a marriage at a very early date between himself and his cousin Nora. Pimento Valley, as you know, is entailed in the male line to my nephew Tom; and Orange Grove is in my own disposal, to leave, of course, to my only daughter. But Mr Tom Dupuy and I both think it would be a great pity that the family estates should be divided, and should in part pass out of the family; so we’ve arranged between us that Mr Tom is to marry my daughter Nora, and that Orange Grove and Pimento Valley are to pass together to them and to their children’s children.’
‘An excellent arrangement,’ Mr Hawthorn put in, with a slight smile. ‘But suppose—just for argument’s sake—that Miss Dupuy were not to fall in with it?’