‘Why, just you look here, Nora: it’s somehow like this, I tell you plainly. Here was I last night down at Pimento. I saw by the blaze that these nigger fellows must have broken loose, and must be burning down the Orange Grove cane-houses; so there I stopped all night long, working away as hard as I could work—no nigger could have worked harder—trying to protect your father’s canes and the vacuum pans from these murdering, howling rebels. And now, when I come round here this morning to tell you, after having made sure the whole year’s crop at old Pimento, one of your fine English flouts is all the thanks I get from you, miss, for my night’s labour.’
Nora laughed—laughed in spite of herself—laughed aloud a simple, merry, girlish laugh of pure amusement—it was so comical. There they had all stood last night in imminent danger of their lives, and of what is dearer than life itself, surrounded by a frantic, yelling mob of half-demented, rum-maddened negroes—her father left for dead upon the piazza steps, Harry Noel hacked with cutlasses before her very eyes, herself trampled under foot in her swoon upon the drawing-room floor by the naked soles of those negro rioters—and now this morning, Cousin Tom comes up quietly when all was over to tell her at his ease how he had taken the most approved precautions for the protection of his beloved vacuum pans. Every time she thought of it, Nora laughed again, with a fresh little outburst of merry laughter, more and more vehemently, just as though her father were not at that very moment lying within between life and death, as still and motionless as a corpse, in his own bedroom.
There is nothing more fatal to the possible prospects of a suitor, however hopeless, than to be openly laughed at by the lady of his choice at a critical moment—nothing more galling to a man under any circumstances than patent ridicule from a beautiful woman. Tom Dupuy grew redder and redder every minute, and stammered and stuttered in helpless speechlessness; and still Nora looked at him and laughed, ‘for all the world,’ he thought to himself, ‘as if I were just nobody else but the clown at the theatre.’
But that was not indeed the stage on which Tom Dupuy really performed the part of clown with such distinguished success in his unconscious personation.
‘How’s your father this morning?’ he asked at last gruffly, with an uneasy shuffle. ‘I hear the niggers cut him about awfully last night, and next door to killed him with their beastly cutlasses.’
Nora drew herself up and checked her untimely laughter with a sudden sense of the demands of the situation, as she answered once more in her coldest tone: ‘My father is getting on as well as we can expect, thank you, Mr Tom Dupuy. We are much obliged to you for your kind inquiries. He slept the night pretty well, all things considered, and is partially conscious again this morning. He was very nearly killed last night, as you say; and if it hadn’t been for Mr Noel and Mr Hawthorn, who kindly came up at once and tried to protect us, he would have been killed outright, and I with him. But Mr Noel and Mr Hawthorn had happily no vacuum pans and no trash-houses to engage their first and chief attention.’
Tom Dupuy sneered visibly. ‘Hm!’ he said. ‘Two coloured fellows! Upon my conscience! the Dupuys of Trinidad must be coming down in the world, it seems, when they have to rely for help in a nigger rising upon two coloured fellows.’
‘If they’d had to rely upon white men like you,’ Nora answered angrily, flushing crimson as she spoke, ‘they’d have been burnt last night upon the ashes of the cane-house, and not a soul would have stirred a hand or foot to save them or protect them.’
Tom laughed to himself a sharp, short, malicious laugh. ‘Ha, ha!’ he said, ‘my fine English-bred lady, so that’s the way the wind blows, is it? I may be a fool, and I know you think me one’—Nora bowed immediately a sarcastic acquiescence—‘but I’m not such a fool as not to see through a woman’s face into a woman’s mind like an open window. I heard that that woolly-headed Hawthorn man had been over here and made a most cowardly time-serving speech to the confounded niggers, giving way to all their preposterous demands in the most outrageous and ridiculous fashion; but I didn’t hear that the other coloured fellow—your fine-spoken English friend Noel’—he hissed the words out with all the concentrated strength of his impotent hatred—‘had been up here too, to put his own finger into the pie when the crust was burning. Just like his impudence! the conceited coxcomb!’
‘Mr Noel is lying inside, in our own house here, this very moment, dangerously wounded,’ Nora cried, her face now like a crimson peony; ‘and he was cut down by the negroes last night, standing up bravely, alone and single-handed, with no weapon but a little riding-whip, facing those mad rebels like an angry tiger, and trying to protect me from their insults and their cutlasses; while you, sir, were stopping snugly away down at Pimento Valley, looking carefully after your canes and your vacuum pans. Tom Dupuy, if you dare to say another word, now or ever, in my hearing against the man who tried to save my life from those wild wretches at the risk of his own, as sure as I’m standing here, sir, I give you fair notice I’ll chastise you myself, as soon as I’ll look at you, you cowardly backbiter!—And now, Mr Dupuy, good-morning.’