Tom saw the game was fairly up and his hand outwitted. It was no use arguing with her any longer. ‘When she’s in this humour,’ he said to himself philosophically, ‘you might as well try to reason with a wounded lioness.’ So he whistled carelessly for Slot to fellow, lifted his hat as politely as he was able—he didn’t pretend to all these fine new-fangled town-bred ways of Harry Noel’s—jumped with awkward agility upon his chestnut pony, turned its head in the direction of Pimento Valley, and delivered a parting Parthian shot from a safe distance, just as he got beyond the garden gateway. ‘Good-by, Miss Nora,’ he said then savagely, raising his hat a second time with sarcastic courtesy: ‘good-bye for ever. This is our last meeting. And remember that I always said you’d finish in the end, for all your fine English education, in marrying a confounded woolly-headed brown man!’
CHAPTER XLV.
All day long, Mr Dupuy lay speechless and almost motionless on his bed, faint with loss of blood, and hovering between life and death, but gradually mending by imperceptible degrees, as Marian fancied. The brain had been terribly shaken, and there were some symptoms of stunning and concussion; but the main trouble was merely the excessive drain on the vascular system from the long-continued and unchecked bleeding. About mid-day, he became hot and feverish, with a full pulse, beating unsteadily. Macfarlane, who had remained in the house all night, ordered him at once a rough mixture of sal-volatile, bismuth, and whisky. ‘And whatever ye do,’ he said emphatically, ‘don’t forget the whisky—a good wine-glassful in half a pint of cold water.’
Mr Dupuy was raised in the bed to drink the mixture, which he swallowed mechanically in a half-unconscious fashion; and then a bandage of pounded ice was applied to his forehead, and leeches were hastily sent for to Port-of-Spain to reduce the inflammation. Long before the leeches had time to arrive, however, Nora, who was watching by his bedside, observed that his eyes began to open more frequently than before, and that gleams of reason seemed to come over them every now and again for brief intervals. ‘Give him some more whisky,’ Macfarlane said in his decided tone; ‘there’s nothing like it, nothing like it—in these cases—especially for a man of Dupuy’s idiosyncrasy.’
At that moment Mr Dupuy’s lips moved feebly, and he tried to turn with an effort on the pillow.
‘Hush, hush!’ Nora cried; ‘he wants to speak. He has something to tell us. What is it he’s saying? Listen, listen!’
Mr Dupuy’s lips moved again, and a faint voice proceeded slowly from the depths of his bosom: ‘Not fit to hold a candle to old Trinidad rum, I tell you, doctor.’
Macfarlane rubbed his hand against his thigh with evident pleasure and satisfaction. ‘He’s wrong there,’ he murmured, ‘undoubtedly wrong, as every judicious person could easily tell him; but no matter. He’ll do now, when once he’s got life enough left in him to contradict one. It always does a Dupuy good to contradict other people. Let it be rum, then—a wine-glassful of Mr Tom’s best stilling.’
Almost as soon as the rum was swallowed, Mr Dupuy seemed to mend rapidly for the passing moment. He looked up and saw Nora. ‘That’s well then,’ he said with a sigh, recollecting suddenly the last night’s adventures. ‘So they didn’t kill you after all, Nora?’
Nora stooped down with unwonted tenderness and kissed him fervently. ‘No, papa,’ she said; ‘they didn’t; nor you either.’