Chapter XVIII

The very next morning, as Edward and Marian were still loitering over the mangoes and bananas at eleven o’clock breakfast—the West Indies keep continental hours—they were surprised and pleased by hearing a pony’s tramp cease suddenly at the front-door, and Nora Dupuy’s well-known voice calling out as cheerily and childishly as ever: ‘Marian, Marian! you dear old thing, please send somebody out here at once, to hold my horse for a minute, will you?’

The words fell upon both their ears just then as an oasis in the desert of isolation from women’s society, to which they had been condemned for the last ten days. The tears rose quickly into Marian’s eyes at those familiar accents, and she ran out hastily, with arms outstretched, to meet her one remaining girl-acquaintance. ‘O Nora, Nora, darling Nora!’ she cried, catching the bright little figure lovingly in her arms, as Nora leapt with easy grace from her mountain pony, ‘why didn’t you come before, my darling? Why did you leave me so long alone, and make us think you had forgotten all about us?’

Nora flung herself passionately upon her friend’s neck, and between laughing and crying, kissed her over and over again so many times without speaking, that Marian knew at once in her heart it was all right there at least, and that Nora, for one, wasn’t going to desert them. Then the poor girl, still uncertain whether to cry or laugh, rushed up to Edward and seized his hand with such warmth of friendliness, that Marian half imagined she was going to kiss him fervently on the spot, in her access of emotion. And indeed, in the violence of her feeling, Nora very nearly did fling her arms around Edward Hawthorn, whom she had learned to regard on the way out almost in the light of an adopted brother.

‘My darling,’ Nora cried vehemently, as soon as she could find space for utterance, ‘my pet, my own sweet Marian, you dear old thing, you darling, you sweetheart!—I didn’t know about it; they never told me. Papa and Tom have been deceiving me disgracefully: they said you were away up at Agualta, and that you particularly wished to receive no visitors until you’d got comfortably settled in at your new quarters here at Mulberry. And I said to papa, nonsense; that that didn’t apply to me, and that you’d be delighted to see me wherever and whenever I chose to call upon you. And papa said—O Marian, I can’t bear to tell you what he said: it’s so wicked, so dreadful—papa said that he’d met Mr Hawthorn—Edward, I mean—and that Edward had told him you didn’t wish at present to see me, because—well, because, he said, you thought our circles would be so very different. And I couldn’t imagine what he meant, so I asked him. And then he told me—he told me that horrid, wicked, abominable, disgraceful calumny. And I jumped up and said it was a lie—yes, I said a lie, Marian—I didn’t say a story: I said it was a lie, and I didn’t believe it. But if it was true—and I don’t care myself a bit, whether it’s true or whether it isn’t—I said it was a mean, cowardly, nasty thing to go and rake it up now about two such people as you and Edward, darling. And whether it’s true or whether it isn’t, Marian, I love you both dearly with all my heart, and I shall always love you; and I don’t care a pin who on earth hears me say so.’ And then Nora broke down at once into a flood of tears, and flung herself once more with passionate energy on Marian’s shoulder.

‘Nora darling,’ Marian whispered, weeping too, ‘I’m so glad you’ve come at last. I didn’t mind any of the rest a bit, because they’re nothing to me; it doesn’t matter; but when I thought you had forgotten us and given us up, it made my heart bleed!’

Nora’s tears began afresh. ‘Why, pet,’ she said, ‘I’ve been trying to get away to come and see you every day for the last week; and papa wouldn’t let me have the horses; and I didn’t know the way; and it was too far to walk; and I didn’t know what on earth to do, or how to get to you. But last night papa and Tom came home’—here Nora’s face burned violently, and she buried it in her hands to hide her vicarious shame—‘and I heard them talking in the piazza; and I couldn’t understand it all; but, O Marian, I understood enough to know that they had called upon you here without me, and that they had behaved most abominably, most cruelly to you and Edward. And I went out to the piazza, as white as a sheet, Rosina says, and I said: “Papa, you have acted as no gentleman would act; and as for you, Tom Dupuy, I’m heartily ashamed to think you’re my own cousin!” and then I went straight up to my bedroom that minute, and haven’t said a word to either of them ever since!’

Marian kissed her once more, and pressed the tearful girl tight against her bosom—that sisterly embrace seemed to her now such an unspeakable consolation and comfort. ‘And how did you get away this morning, dear?’ she asked softly.

‘Oh,’ Nora exclaimed, with a childish smile and a little cry of triumph, ‘I was determined to come, Marian, and so I came here. I got Rosina—that’s my maid, such a nice black girl—to get her lover, Isaac Pourtalès, who isn’t one of our servants, you know, to saddle the pony for me; because papa had told our groom I wasn’t to have the horses without his orders, or to go to your house if the groom was with me, or else he’d dismiss him. So Isaac Pourtalès, he saddled it for me; and Rosina ran all the way here to show me the road till she got nearly to the last corner; but she wouldn’t come on and hold the pony for me, for if she did, she said, de massa would knock de very breff out of her body; and I really believe he would too, Marian, for papa’s a dreadful man to deal with when he’s in a passion.’

‘But won’t he be awfully angry with you, darling,’ Marian asked, ‘for coming here when he told you not to?’

‘Of course he will,’ Nora replied, drawing herself up and laughing quietly. ‘But I don’t care a bit, you know, for all his anger. I’m not going to keep away from a dear old darling like you, and a dear, good, kind fellow like Edward, all for nothing, just to please him. He may storm away as long as he has a mind to; but I tell you what, my dear, he shan’t prevent me.’

‘I don’t mind a bit about it now, Nora, since you’re come at last to me.’

‘Mind it, darling! I should think not! Why on earth should you mind it? It’s too preposterous! Why, Marian, whenever I think of it—though I’m a West Indian born myself, and dreadfully prejudiced, and all that wicked sort of thing, you know—it seems to me the most ridiculous nonsense I ever heard of. Just consider what kind of people these are out here in Trinidad, and what kind of people you and Edward are, and all your friends over in England! There’s my cousin, Tom Dupuy, now, for example; what a pretty sort of fellow he is, really. Even if I didn’t care a pin for you, I couldn’t give way to it; and as it is, I’m going to come here just as often as ever I please, and nobody shall stop me. Papa and Tom are always talking about the fighting Dupuys; but I can tell you they’ll find I’m one of the fighting Dupuys too, if they want to fight me about it.—Now, tell me, Marian, doesn’t it seem to you yourself the most ridiculous reversal of the natural order of things you ever heard of in all your life, that these people here should pretend to set themselves up as—as being in any way your equals, darling?’ And Nora laughed a merry little laugh of pure amusement, so contagious, that Edward and Marian joined in it too, for the first time almost since they came to that dreadful Trinidad.

Companionship and a fresh point of view lighten most things. Nora stopped with the two Hawthorns all that day till nearly dinnertime, talking and laughing with them much as usual after the first necessary explanations; and by five o’clock, Marian and Edward were positively ashamed themselves that they had ever made so much of what grew with thinking on it into so absurdly small and unimportant a matter. ‘Upon my word, Marian,’ Edward said, as Nora rode away gaily, unprotected—she positively wouldn’t allow him to accompany her homeward—‘I really begin to believe it would be better after all to stop in Trinidad and fight it out bravely as well as we’re able for just a year or two.’

‘I thought so from the first,’ Marian answered courageously; ‘and now that Nora has cheered us up a little, I think so a great deal more than ever.’

When Nora reached Orange Grove, Mr Dupuy stood, black as thunder, waiting to receive her in the piazza. Two negro men-servants were loitering about casually in the doorway.

‘Nora,’ he said, in a voice of stern displeasure, ‘have you been to visit these new nigger people?’

Nora glanced back at him defiantly and haughtily. ‘I have not,’ she answered with a steady stare. ‘I have been calling upon my very dear friends, the District Court Judge and Mrs Hawthorn, who are both our equals. I am not in the habit of associating with what you choose to call nigger people.’

Mr Dupuy’s face grew purple once more. He glanced round quickly at the two men-servants. ‘Go to your room, miss,’ he said with suppressed rage—‘go to your room, and stop there till I send for you!’

‘I was going there myself,’ Nora answered calmly, without moving a muscle. ‘I mean to remain there, and hold no communication with the rest of the family, as long as you choose to apply such unjust and untrue names to my dearest friends and oldest companions.—Rosina, come here, please! Have the kindness to bring me up some dinner to my own boudoir.’