Trade Wind (20 page)

“Not that I have ever met him,” confided Cressy, “because he has never called upon his sisters when I have been there—you have no idea how strict Arab women are about men visiting them. Far stricter than we are. They make the most ridiculous fuss about it, even though some of them are terribly fat and old and one cannot imagine any man being in the least interested. Though to hear them talk you’d think that they were all as beautiful as the day and that all men were monsters. Some of them are of course: as beautiful as the day, I mean. Like Salmé‘s half-sister, Cholé. Chole’s mother was a Circassian slave-girl too, and she is simply lovely; you’ve no idea. Hero. Like an
Arabian Nights
’ Princess. And then there’s Méjé—she’s another sister…”

It was obvious that the sentimental and romantic Cressy had fallen completely under the spell of the Sultan’s charming half-sisters, despite the fact that they were apparently engaged in plotting to depose their brother Majid and seat the Heir-Apparent in his place. “You see, Bargash would make a much better Sultan than Majid,” explained Cressy earnestly. “Even Papa says so.”

“You mean Uncle Nat knows all about this?” demanded Hero, startled.

“Oh no, indeed not. But I have heard him say a hundred times that Majid is weak and dissolute and quite unfitted to rule. And everyone knows that Prince Bargash is not at all like that: one has only to look at him. I saw him once at a big reception at the Palace, and he is really very handsome. Dark of course, but not nearly as dark as you would think. Lots of them are not. Cholé and Salmé are quite fair, and I know you’ll just love them. Hero. They are so charming and graceful and…But Dan—I mean Lieutenant Larrimore—said that it was a great mistake to see so much of them, because they were playing with fire and that I was too young to understand what was going on. He said he was only warning me for my own good and—and then we quarrelled, and in the end he walked out of the house and his ship sailed the next day, so I didn’t see him again.”

“But you saw him only this morning,” Hero pointed out.

“Not to talk to. And he only gave me the
stiffest
bow when he saw me—as though I was some old dowd like Mrs Kealey. So of course I was stiff too and wouldn’t look at him. But if he had a spark of—of feeling, he would apologize and beg my pardon.”

“You ought to know by now that the English never apologize,” said Hero crisply, “because they are always quite sure that they are in the right And if I were you, Cressy, I would not have anything more to do with him. Why, there are thousands of American boys—millions of them—who are much better looking and far nicer than Lieutenant Larrimore.”

“Not in Zanzibar,” said Cressy sadly.

She brooded for a silent minute, her white forehead puckered in a frown, and then said resentfully: “They are all on the side of the Sultan, of course. The English, I mean. That stuffy old Colonel Edwards, and the Kealeys and the Platts. Olivia is the only one who is not, because she has a great deal of character and sensibility. But all the rest of them are for Majid just because he is older than Bargash, and because he’s there and the English don’t like things changed unless it’s they who change them. They haven’t any imagination, and they don’t care a bit that Majid is no good at all while the Prince could be counted on to bring about sadly needed reforms.”

Hero herself had set out for Zanzibar with reform in mind, and she had not forgotten what Jules Dubail had said on the subject of the present Sultan. Nevertheless she could not refrain from pointing out that history had shown all royal and hereditary rulers to be narrow-minded tyrants, so how could anyone be sure that this younger brother, once he was in power, would prove any better than the older one?

“Because his sisters say so,” retorted Cressy, firing up. “And they would know, just as I would know about Clay. I guess girls always know about their brothers. They say that Majid is no good and that all he wants to do is drink and spend money, and—and have orgies and things with people like Rory Frost. Papa says that Captain Frost is hand-in-glove with him and forever at the Palace, and that Colonel Edwards ought to put a stop to it. But I don’t suppose he will, because of Captain Frost being an Englishman too. I
told
you the English were all on the Sultan’s side. Even Dan is, and that’s why he doesn’t want me to see so much of the Princesses. He’s just taking sides like the rest of them!”

“He wouldn’t take Captain Frost’s side,” said Hero thoughtfully. “He doesn’t like him any more than Uncle Nat and Clay do. In fact, a good deal less.”

“I know. He says Rory Frost is a disgrace to the nation. But wouldn’t you think that would show him how
dreadful
the Sultan is?—having a man like that for a friend? But it doesn’t. He’s as bad as Colonel Edwards and I’d like to know who told him that I’d been seeing the Princesses; and what business it is of his anyway…I won’t be spied on and told what I should do and what I shouldn’t. If Papa doesn’t object, I don’t see why Dan—”

Cressy stopped and bit her lip, and after a fractional pause said carefully: “I don’t mean that Papa knows what we talk about, but he does not mind my calling at Beit-el-Tani. Grown-ups,” added Cressy (who despite her recent assertion that she was no longer a child, still thought of her elders in that schoolroom term), “have to be so careful about that sort of thing, and Papa would only say that it was none of my business. Which is not really true, because
I
think that—that helping the populace should be everyone’s business, don’t you?”

“Certainly,” agreed Hero emphatically: unaware that the warmth of her agreement sprang not so much from zeal to assist “the populace’, as from the fact that she was instantly sure that any boon companion of Captain Frost’s was,
ipso facto
, a thoroughly bad character and quite unfitted to remain in a position of authority.

Had it not been for the introduction of Captain Frost’s name. Hero might well have been inclined to treat her cousin’s confidences as trifling, and to regard Cressy’s fervent championship of a dusky princeling who desired to usurp his brother’s throne as a matter for amusement. But the mention of the English slaver had put quite a different light on the affair, for it succeeded in arousing both her hostility and her own crusading instincts.

Could this, she wondered, be the work that Providence intended her to do? If so, then even that terrifying fall from the deck of the
Norah Crayne
had its place in the scheme of things, since but for that she would have known little (and that only by hearsay) of Emory Tyson Frost and the
Virago
. But because she knew him, she also knew that if he were hand-in-glove with Sultan Majid it was for no good purpose, and that the sooner such an unholy alliance was broken up the better.

No doubt ‘Roaring Rory’ acted as a jackal to the Sultan; smuggling slaves either to or from the island for then: mutual profit. In which case it was not surprising that Lieutenant Larrimore had so far failed to lay him by the heels, since such a partnership would be difficult to defeat. With the Sultan’s resources placed at his disposal and the Sultan’s police force—if any—turning a blind or at best an unhelpful eye, it was no wonder that the
Virago
’s insolent Captain continued to flourish like the green bay tree of the Bible and to avoid all attempts to bring him to book. But if this Prince Bargash, who aspired to the throne, disapproved of his dissolute brother, it followed that he must also disapprove quite as strongly of his brother’s dissolute friends. Which meant that the downfall of the Sultan would automatically entail the downfall of Captain Emory Frost…

“
I am not ungrateful
,” Hero assured her conscience, “
but one must be just
.” Unprincipled scoundrels such as Captain Frost were a disgrace to the white races, a menace to society and an ugly example to the unenlightened Heathen who were—Heaven and Hero Hollis knew—quite bad enough on their own without any Western encouragement. She might not be able to release slaves, but at least she could strike a blow against the whole detestable system by helping to rid the island of one self-confessed slaver. And if this entailed espousing the cause of Prince Bagash and assisting to depose Sultan Majid, she was perfectly ready to do so, since it was only too clear that the ‘populace’ would be greatly benefited by the removal of the present ruler and his renegade friend from any position of authority.

“But are you quite sure,” demanded Hero, struck by a sudden and unpleasant thought, “that they do not intend to do the Sultan any harm? They are not planning his assassination or anything like that?—you know what Orientals are capable of.”

“Good gracious, no!” said Cressy, scandalized: “Why, he’s their brother. Or at least, their half-brother. I believe they all had different mothers, though Sultan Saïd was their father. Harems, you know. And—and mistresses and things.’ Cressy blushed, and added hurriedly: “They wouldn’t dream of harming him. They only wish to depose him, and then, when Bargash is Sultan, Majid can retire with a pension to somewhere on the mainland like Dar-es-Salaam, where he has been wasting a lot of money building himself a new palace.”

The artlessness of this pronouncement was lost upon Hero, who in common with her cousin knew little or nothing of the history of the Seyyids of Muscat and Oman (or indeed of any Eastern rulers) and had by now quite forgotten Captain Frost’s assertion that fratricide, and worse, spattered the pages of such chronicles with ugly scarlet stains. Cressy’s statement sounded entirely reasonable to her and she had no hesitation in accepting it The Sultan’s sisters were clearly working for Justice and the Common Good, and therefore merited her support, and all that remained was to make certain that their brother Bargash was truly fitted to rule.

Any other young woman might have been expected, on such a day, to brush aside political problems in favour of more personal ones. But Hero Athena Hollis was made of sterner stuff, and moreover she conceived herself to have a Mission. The strange, high-roomed Arab house, the cruel, beautiful, horrifying Island, her fantastic rescue from death and Clayton’s recent unpardonable observations, all faded into insignificance when compared with the prospect of striking a blow against the detestable institution of slavery. ‘
I always knew that there would he something for me to do in Zanzibar
,’ thought Hero with a deep sense of gratitude and fulfilment.

She had entirely forgotten about Clayton, and it was Cressy who heard the knock on the door and answered it.

“No, of course you can’t come in, Clay,” protested Cressy, every bit as shocked at the prospect of a gentleman entering a lady’s bedroom as any ornament of the harem would have been under similar circumstances. “Yes, I’ll tell her.”

She closed the door firmly, and turned to whisper that it was Clay and what should she tell him? “He says he wants to see you. I guess it’s to apologize.”

“Tell him that I’ll be down in five minutes,” said Hero.

It was, in point of fact, nearer twenty. But the delay had at least given Clayton more time in which to prepare his excuses and put his apologies into an acceptable form, and all might have been well had he not finished by saying that in proof of his repentance he had asked to be associated with the message of gratitude from his stepfather that was being conveyed by a trusted member of the Consul’s Arab staff to Captain Frost’s house in the city:

“Though I can tell you it went against the grain to do it,” admitted Clayton frankly. “However, as he seems to have treated you with tolerable civility, I felt it was the least I could do.”

His words awoke a disturbing echo of something that Hero herself had recently said to Captain Frost, and troubled by it she said anxiously: “But surely Uncle Nat means to call upon him personally to tell him how grateful I—we are? When you consider what we owe him, to send only a letter—”

“A message,” corrected Clayton. “I’m sorry, Hero, but I guess you still don’t understand the difficulties of our situation. I know that you’ll think us hard and ungrateful, but we have to think not only of you but of our official position here. We have agreed that although it may seem discourteous, we cannot allow a man who is known to be an unscrupulous lawbreaker to get his hands on something that he might one day make use of to press some fancied claim upon you.”

“But he does have a claim on me, Clay. I owe him—”

“You owe him nothing,” interrupted Clayton sharply. “Captain Fullbright made that quite clear when he told us that Frost’s vessel was completely out of control and that it was only luck and the mercy of God that saved the
Norah Crayne
from being rammed and sunk, or overwhelmed by a cross sea. And you yourself told us that if a wave hadn’t carried you on to the
Virago
h rat-lines you couldn’t have avoided being drowned. It was Frost himself who was responsible for you being swept into the sea, and Providence and not Frost who saved you. And if he’d had the smallest consideration for our feelings, he would have brought you to Zanzibar immediately and saved us days of unnecessary grief and mental suffering. I reckon he hasn’t put himself out in any way, and I for one find his callous display of dilatoriness unforgivable.”

“Yes, I—I know all that,” said Hero unhappily. “And to tell the truth, Clay, I agree with you. But all the same he was instrumental, under Providence, in saving my life, and we cannot overtook that however much we may dislike it. Besides, as you have just pointed out, he could have made himself exceedingly unpleasant to me had he wished.”

“If he’d attempted anything of the sort he would have paid heavily for it,” retorted Clayton hotly. “No, Hero. It’s generous of you to feel grateful to this man when he has done little or nothing to deserve it, and knowing you as I do, I feel sure that you’ve already said all that is necessary to him in the way of thanks. But if any of us were to be seen calling at his house, particularly when it is not known that you were on his ship, it would cause a great deal of comment. And one cannot,” added Clayton, clinching the matter, “touch pitch without being defiled.”

It was unfortunate that he should have elected to repeat an adage that Captain Frost had himself quoted earlier in the day, since it recalled to Hero’s mind a good deal more that the Captain had said. She had already decided that for its own good the Island must be rid of this man, but the reflection that he had forecast the reactions of her relatives with regrettable accuracy and could now not only say ‘
I told you so
,’ but convict her, with them, of lack of courtesy, was not to be borne. It became, in that instant, a point of honour that he should be personally and properly thanked.