CHAPTER VII.
The morning when Edward and Marian were to start on their voyage to Trinidad, with Nora in their charge, was a beautifully clear, calm, and sunny one. The tiny steam-tender that took them down Southampton Water, from the landing-stage to the moorings where the big ocean-going Severn lay at anchor, ploughed her way merrily through the blue ripplets that hardly broke the level surface. Though it was a day of parting, nobody was over-sad. General Ord had come down with Marian, his face bronzed with twenty years of India, but straight and erect still like a hop-pole, as he stood with his tall thin figure lithe and steadfast on the little quarter-deck. Mrs Ord was there too, crying a little, of course, as is only decorous on such occasions, yet not more so than a parting always demands from the facile eyes of female humanity. Marian didn’t cry much, either; she felt so safe in going with Edward, and hoped to be back so soon again on a summer visit to her father and mother. As for Nora, Nora was always bright as the sunshine, and could never see anything except the bright side of things. ‘We shall take such care of dear Marian in Trinidad, Mrs Ord!’ she said gaily. ‘You’ll see her home again on a visit in another twelvemonth, with more roses on her cheek than she’s got now, when she’s had a taste of our delicious West Indian mountain air.’
‘And if Trinidad suits Miss Ord—Mrs Hawthorn, I mean—dear me, how stupid of me!’ Harry Noel put in quietly, ‘half as well as it seems to have suited you, Miss Dupuy, we shall have no cause to complain of Hawthorn for having taken her out there.’
‘Oh, no fear of that,’ Nora answered, smiling one of her delicious childish smiles. ‘You don’t know how delightful Trinidad is, Mr Noel; it’s really one of the most charming places in all Christendom.’
‘On your recommendation, then,’ Harry answered, bowing slightly and looking at her with eyes full of meaning, ‘I shall almost be tempted to go out some day and see for myself how really delightful are these poetical tropics of yours.’
Nora blushed, and her eyes fell slightly. ‘You would find them very lovely, no doubt, Mr Noel,’ she answered, more demurely and in a half-timid fashion; ‘but I can’t recommend them, you know, with any confidence, because I was such a very little girl when I first came home to England. You had better not come out to Trinidad merely on the strength of my recommendation.’
Harry bowed his head again gravely. ‘As you will,’ he said. ‘Your word is law. And yet, perhaps some day, I shouldn’t be surprised if Hawthorn and Mrs Hawthorn were to find me dropping in upon them unexpectedly for a scratch dinner. After all, it’s a mere nothing nowadays to run across the millpond, as the Yankees call it.’
They reached the Severn about an hour before the time fixed for starting, and sat on deck talking together with that curious sense of finding nothing to say which always oppresses one on the eve of a long parting. It seems as though no subject of conversation sufficiently important for the magnitude of the occasion ever occurred to one: the mere everyday trivialities of ordinary talk sound out of place at such a serious moment. So, by way of something to do, the party soon began to institute a series of observations upon Edward and Marian’s fellow-passengers, as they came on board, one after another, in successive batches on the little tender.
‘Just look at that brown young man!’ Nora cried, in a suppressed whisper, as a tall and gentlemanly looking mulatto walked up the gangway from the puffing tug. ‘We shall be positively overwhelmed with coloured people, I declare! There are three Hottentot Venuses down in the saloon already, bound for Haiti; and a San Domingo general, as black as your hat; and a couple of walnut-coloured old gentlemen going to Dominica. And now, here’s another regular brown man coming on board to us. What’s his name, I wonder? Oh, there it is, painted as large as life upon his portmanteau! “Dr Whitaker, Trinidad.” Why, my dear, he’s actually going the whole way with us. And a doctor too! goodness gracious. Just fancy being attended through fever by a man of that complexion!’
‘Oh, hush, Nora!’ Marian cried, in genuine alarm. ‘He’ll overhear you, and you’ll hurt his feelings. Besides, you oughtn’t to talk so about other people, whether they hear you or whether they don’t.’