‘So I think,’ Mr Hawthorn answered quietly. ‘I quite agree with you—it isn’t in them.’
As he spoke, a negro servant, neatly dressed in a cool white linen livery, entered the piazza with a small budget of letters on an old-fashioned Spanish silver salver. Mr Hawthorn took them up eagerly. ‘The English mail!’ he said with an apologetic look towards his two guests. ‘You’ll excuse my just glancing through them, Mr Dupuy, won’t you? I can never rest, the moment the mail’s in, until I know that my dear boy in England is still really well and happy.’
Mr Dupuy nodded assent with a condescending smile; and the master of Agualta broke open his son’s envelope with a little eager hasty flutter. He ran his eye hurriedly down the first page; and then, with a sudden cry, he laid down the letter rapidly on the table, and called out aloud: ‘Mary, Mary!’
Mrs Hawthorn came out at once from the little boudoir behind the piazza, whose cool Venetian blinds gave directly upon the part where they were sitting.
‘Mary, Mary!’ Mr Hawthorn cried, utterly regardless of his two visitors’ presence, ‘what on earth do you think has happened? Edward’s coming out to us—coming out immediately. Oh, my poor boy, my poor boy, this is too unexpected! He’s coming out to us at once, at once, without a single moment’s warning!’
Mrs Hawthorn took up the letter and read it through hastily with a woman’s quickness; then she laid it down again, and looked blankly at her trembling husband in evident distress; but neither of them said a single word to one another.
The elder Dupuy was the first to break the ominous silence. ‘Not by the next steamer, I suppose?’ he inquired curiously.
Mr Hawthorn nodded in reply. ‘Yes, yes; by the next steamer.’
As he spoke, Tom Dupuy glanced at his uncle with a meaning glance, and then went on stolidly as ever: ‘How about these cattle, though, Mr Hawthorn?’
The old man looked back at him half angrily, half contemptuously. ‘Go and look at the cattle yourself, if you like, Mr Tom,’ he said haughtily.—‘Here, Jo, you take young Mr Dupuy round to see those Cuban bullocks in the grass-piece, will you? I shall meet your uncle at the Legislative Council on Thursday, and then, if he likes, he can talk over prices with me. I have something else to do at present beside haggling and debating over the sale of bullocks; I must go down to Port-of-Spain immediately, immediately—this very minute.—You must please excuse me, Mr Dupuy, for my business is most important.—Dick, Isaac, Thomas!—some one of you there, get Pride of Barbadoes saddled at once, very fast, will you, and bring her round here to me at the front-door the moment she’s ready.’