‘Well, Nora?’ her father said to her, eyeing her interrogatively. ‘What do you think of it?’
‘I think, papa, Mr Noel’s a very gentlemanly, nice young man, of a very good old English family.’
‘Yes, yes, Nora: I know that, of course. I see as much from Sir Henry Laboutillière’s letter of introduction. But what I mean is, we must have him here, at Orange Grove, naturally, mustn’t we? It would never do, you see, to let a member of the English aristocracy’—Mr Dupuy dwelt lovingly upon these latter words with some unction, as preachers dwell with lingering cadence upon the special shibboleths of their own particular sect or persuasion—‘go to stop with such people as your coloured friends over yonder at Mulberry, the Hawthorns.’
Nora was silent.
‘Why don’t you answer me, miss?’ Mr Dupuy asked testily, after waiting for a moment in silent expectation.
‘Because I will never speak to you about my own friends, papa, when you choose to talk of them in such untrue and undeserved language.’
Mr Dupuy smiled urbanely. He was in a good humour. It flattered him, too, to think that when members of the English aristocracy came out to Trinidad they should naturally select him, Theodore Dupuy, Esquire, of Orange Grove, as the proper person towards whom to look for hospitality. The fame of the fighting Dupuys was probably not unknown to the fashionable world even in London. They were recognised and talked about. So Mr Dupuy merely smiled a bland smile of utter obliviousness, and observed in the air (as men do when they are addressing nobody in particular): ‘Coloured people are always coloured people, I suppose, whether they’re much or little coloured; just as a dog’s always a dog whether he’s a great big heavy St Bernard or a little snarling snapper of a Skye terrier. But anyhow, it’s quite clear to me individually that we can’t let this young Mr Noel—a person of distinction, Nora, a person of distinction—go and stop at any other house in this island except here at Orange Grove, I assure you, my dear. Tom or I must certainly go down to meet the steamer, and bring him up here bodily in the buggy, before your friend Mr Hawthorn—about whose personal complexion I prefer to say absolutely nothing, for good or for evil—has time to fasten on him and drag him away by main force to his own dwelling-place.’ (Mr Dupuy avoided calling Mulberry Lodge a house on principle; for in the West Indies, it is an understood fact that only white people live in houses.)
‘But, papa,’ Nora cried, ‘you really mustn’t. I don’t think you ought to bring him up here. Wouldn’t it—well, you know, wouldn’t it look just a little pointed, considering there’s nobody else at all living in the house except you and me, you know, papa?’
‘My dear,’ Mr Dupuy said, not unkindly, ‘a member of the English aristocracy, when he comes to Trinidad, ought to be received in the house of one of the recognised gentry of the island, and not in that—well, not in the dwelling-place of any person not belonging to the aristocracy of Trinidad. Noblesse oblige, Nora; noblesse oblige, remember. Besides, when you consider the relation in which you already stand to your cousin Tom, my dear—why, an engaged young lady, of course, an engaged young lady occupies nearly the same position in that respect as if she were already actually married.’
‘But I’m not engaged, papa,’ Nora answered earnestly. ‘And I never will be to Tom Dupuy, if I die unmarried, either.’