by M. M. Kaye
It had not been many months after this episode, and while it was still raw in his memory, that the Hollises had arrived in the island, and Lieutenant Larrimore, accompanying Colonel Edwards to a formal call on the new American Consul, had met the Consul’s daughter. And straightway lost his heart…
She was seventeen and as pretty as a spray of apple blossom: “A sight for sore eyes’ indeed—and Dan’s had been sore for too long. Everything about her enchanted him: her gaiety, her impulsiveness, her enjoyment of all that was strange and new, her obvious love for her father and her pretty, coaxing way with him. Even her youthful silliness, which in another girl he would probably have thought tiresome, merely made him feel fondly indulgent and increased his desire to protect her: from which it may be seen that Dan, like Captain Fullbright, did not demand brains and force of character in a woman, but preferred sweetness and charm; qualities that Cressy possessed in abundance.
Yet in spite of the fact that the object of his devotion showed every sign of reciprocating his feeling for her, his wooing had not gone smoothly. Partly because his visits to Zanzibar were erratic and never long enough for him to make the headway he could have wished with her parents, let alone with Cressy, and partly because her half-brother, Clayton Mayo, had unaccountably taken a dislike to him and gone out of his way to see that Dan’s visits to the Consulate were as short (and as well chaperoned!) as possible—though fortunately Mayo, being a popular young man, was often out, and left to herself Cressy’s mother was far from strict. Dan was at a loss to know what he could have said or done to arouse Mayo’s hostility, and it still puzzled him. It could not, surely, be because of his nationality, for Mayo was on excellent terms with the rest of the British community. Perhaps it was only because he did not consider a mere naval lieutenant a good enough match for his pretty sister? In which case…
The jolly-boat passed under the tall, carved poop of a dhow and the beach was hidden from them, though the stench remained heavy on the hot air and followed them to where a flight of stone steps rose up from the oily water.
“I’m afraid you’ll find the smell a bit overpowering in the daytime, “apologized the Lieutenant, who had obviously got used to it, “but it’s not too bad at night when the wind blows off the land. They’re an insanitary lot, and as long as their houses are clean they don’t seem to care what state the streets get into—or the beaches either. But it’ll be a lot better once the monsoon breaks and the rains clean the place up a bit.”
He handed Hero on to the slippery, weed-grown steps and hurried her up through a narrow street where the gutters ran with filth, and veiled and shrouded women and a motley, idling crowd of black, brown, yellow and coffee-coloured men stared at her curiously.
“Why do they all look so different?” enquired Hero, gazing back with equal interest: “From each other, I mean?”
“They are different. The people here come from a dozen different places. Madagascar, the Comoro Islands, India, Africa, Arabia, Goa—even China. It’s the last great slaving centre in the East, and thousands of slaves pass through the Zanzibar Customs House every year. In fact here are some now on their way to the slave market.”
He drew her back against the wall as a file of negroes stumbled past them through the narrow crowded street, roped together and under the charge of a stout Arab trader and half-a-dozen swaggering African retainers who were armed with whips and staves. Fear and starvation had given them a dazed and uncomprehending look that verged on idiocy, and Hero stared at them in white-faced horror: realizing for the second time that morning the enormous difference that lay between reading about something and actually seeing it with one’s own eyes.
She said in a high, choking voice: “Why do you allow it? Why don’t you do something? Why don’t you do something now?”
The Lieutenant turned to look at her, his brow wrinkled in a frown. “Didn’t your relations tell you about this? I know it’s upsetting, the first time you see it, but—”
“You’ll get used to it! Don’t say it! Don’t! I shall never get used to it—never! Those poor creatures. Half of them are children. You’ve got to do something! You stopped the Virago to look for slaves, didn’t you? Then why don’t you arrest that man there and take his slaves away? Now, at once?”
“Because he’s not a British subject and so there’s nothing I can do about it,” said Lieutenant Larrimore curtly. He took her arm and began to urge her along the street.
“But you could buy them…I could buy them. Yes, that’s what I’ll do! I can buy them myself and set them free.”
“To starve?” enquired the Lieutenant dryly. “How are they going to live?”
“My uncle would employ them at the Consulate. He could find work for them, I’m sure. He would if I asked him to.”
“I doubt it The consulates are over-staffed already, and it would create a deal of trouble among your uncle’s other servants. He wouldn’t have quarters for them for one thing, and for another they would have to be fed and clothed as well as housed, and it would take a long time to train them to do even the simplest tasks.”
“But we could surely find someone who would be glad of their help and would be kind to them?”
“If they are bought by any of the local Arabs they will be treated kindly enough,” the Lieutenant assured her. “The Koran forbids the ill-treatment of slaves, and any who are bought here and remain on the island will be lucky. It’s the ones who don’t get sold and are shipped off somewhere else whom you can be sorry for. Even if you did start buying them, you could only buy the smallest fraction of the number that pass through here yearly, and you wouldn’t know what to do with them when you’d got them.”
“I could hire a boat and send them back to—to wherever they came from. Some of them, anyway. The ones that no one else wanted to buy.”
“The chances are that they haven’t any homes left to go to and would be caught and sold again inside a week. What’s more, you’d only be suspected of making money out of it, because not one of the locals would believe you were being altruistic. You can’t afford that. Or rather, your uncle can’t. It would not only be misunderstood, but if it once got about that you were prepared to buy slaves, for whatever reason, half the rascals in the town would bring you their oldest and most useless slaves in order to avoid having to care for them themselves. And it would be your uncle and not you who would have to shoulder that problem. I’m afraid that as his niece and house-guest you are hardly a private individual, and that sort of thing could make things very difficult for him—officially.”
Hero jerked her arm away and quickened her steps as though she could by doing so escape from the cold-hearted common sense of those arguments. But she knew that he was right To buy and free a few slaves, even a few hundred slaves, would not help. And this—this hideous cruelty—was something that men like Captain Frost were responsible for. She had been sailing with a slaver…on a slave ship! That was suddenly something as dreadful to contemplate as the sight of those dazed, starving captives had been.
She did not notice that they had reached a quieter and more open part of the town until, turning a comer they came upon palms and green grass and a frangipani tree whose white, waxy blossoms smelt piercingly sweet after the fetid atmosphere they had left behind them. The tree threw sharp black shadows across the front of a tall white house from the roof of which a flag bearing the familiar stars-and-stripes snapped briskly in the wind, and Lieutenant Larrimore said briefly: “This is the American Consulate. Your uncle’s house.”
Aunt Abigail Hollis had been sitting on a sofa in the drawing-room; clad in deep mourning and engaged in consoling Mrs Fullbright, who was still tearfully blaming herself for the seasickness that had prevented her from taking proper care of her charge. Neither lady had at first recognized Hero, and when they had at last done so, Amelia Fullbright had swooned and Aunt Abby given way to strong hysterics.
Lieutenant Larrimore, dismayed by this display of feminine sensibility, left hastily in search
of Mr Hollis, leaving Hero to contend single-handed with the situation. And Cressy and her father, arriving upon the scene simultaneously and from opposite directions, found bedlam reigning and someone who appeared to be a complete stranger slapping Amelia Fullbright’s hands while exhorting Aunt Abby to stop screaming and fetch the hartshorn.
“Hero!” shrieked Cressy, turning alarmingly pale and showing every sign of following her mother’s example: “It isn’t—it can’t be. I don’t believe it! Whatever have you been…Hero!”
“Yes, it’s me,” said Miss Hollis in ungrammatical agitation. “And don’t you dare start screaming, Cressy. Go get some water…for pity’s sake do something! Uncle Nat—oh, thank goodness you’ve come. Help me lift her.”
The next few minutes were fully occupied by restoring Mrs Fullbright and quieting Mrs Hollis, and after a further and confused interval of tears, kisses, laughter and embraces, a servant was sent running down to the harbour to fetch Captain Thaddaeus and another to find Mr Clayton Mayo, who was thought to be at the French Consulate.
“I just can’t believe it,” wept Mrs Fullbright, keeping tight hold of Hero’s hand: “If you knew what agonies of remorse I have suffered. I don’t know how I survived it. I felt like I’d absolutely die when Thaddaeus told me the dreadful, dreadful news—Drowned!”
“We held a memorial service,” sobbed Aunt Abby, clasping the other hand. “Oh, if only I could feel sure that this isn’t a dream and that I shall wake up and find it isn’t true!”
“Your hair—” gasped Cressy between tears and laughter. “Hero why? Oh honey, your poor face…You look as though you had been in a battle. Does it hurt real bad? Weren’t you terrified? How did it happen? And to think that it was Dan—I mean the Daffodil—that found you.”
“It wasn’t. Well, not exactly…’ Miss Hollis hesitated and looking at her uncle took a deep breath and said resolutely: “I think, Uncle Nat, that I had better tell you at once that I was picked up by a ship called the Virago.”
“The Virago?” exclaimed the Consul sharply, “you mean that blackguardly slave ship? But I thought—”
He swung round to glare at Lieutenant Larrimore who shrugged and said resignedly: “Yes, I’m afraid that is so, sir. It was Frost’s ship that picked up your niece when she fell overboard, and the reason that she came ashore in my charge was because I had occasion to stop and search the Virago this morning off Chuaka Head, and discovered your niece to be on board. We decided…that is, Frost suggested…that in view of his—er—reputation in these parts, it might save Miss Hollis embarrassment if we let it be supposed that she had been found clinging to a spar and been picked up by my ship.”
“He did, did he?” growled the Consul. “Then I guess he must have a few good feelings left, after all. I’m obliged to him. But it won’t work out: his men are bound to chatter.”
“It is plain that you do not know Rory Frost, sir,” said the Lieutenant wryly. “Those men of his are closer than oysters when it suits them.”
“And your own. Lieutenant?”
“I will answer for mine, sir. I have explained the situation to them and they will not talk. The only thing that worries me is why Frost should have suggested such a thing in the first place, for it’s not like him.”
Hero shook out her crushed skirts and said crisply: “There I cannot agree with you. I imagine that it is his own reputation that he is concerned about and not mine at all. It stands to reason that men engaged in illegal traffics can have little reason to trust each other, and I daresay if it were known that the Consul’s niece had occupied a cabin on the Virago for ten days, and then been returned in safety to her uncle, some of Captain Frost’s more dubious associates might suspect him of playing a double game. For myself, however, I am quite prepared to tell the truth, because—”
An agitated outcry from her aunt interrupted her: “Oh, no dear! On no account! You cannot possibly know that man’s reputation. I do not mean just slaves. He is a shocking libertine. Why, there was Mrs Hallam who…and an unfortunate girl from Mozambique (a missionary’s daughter, too! quite dreadful) and that Frenchwoman, what was her name? who ran away from her husband and then tried to poison herself when he took up with a half-caste dancer from Mombasa, and—”
“Mrs Hollis!” bellowed the Consul, scandalized.
“Oh goodness!…of course…I-I guess one shouldn’t mention such creatures. But when one knows Well, you can see what people would say if it were known that Hero had spent ten days in his company. It would not do at all. People are so-so…”
Aunt Abby broke off with a fluttering, helpless gesture of her small plump hands, and her husband said impatiently: “Yes, yes, we all fully understand the situation and if we are to accept this version—and I reckon we should—we had better agree on what is supposed to have occurred.” He turned to glare at the Lieutenant and added: “You’re the one who’ll have to think up the answers to that!”
“I know, sir,” concurred the Lieutenant without enthusiasm, “and all I can suggest is that we say that her recollection of the whole affair is extremely vague, but that she must have remained afloat with the aid of some piece of wreckage for several hours until a providential wave flung her aboard my ship, and that owing to shock, exposure and severe bruising she was unable to answer questions for several days. That will account for the delay in bringing her to Zanzibar, and should serve to satisfy the curious.”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed Aunt Abby. “One does not like to tell deliberate falsehoods, but right now I can’t help feeling that we are justified in—in—”
“In telling deliberate falsehoods,” said Hero bleakly. “I guess so. And now, please, if you will show me to my room, Aunt, I will see if I cannot do something towards improving my appearance.”
Escorted by all three ladies, none of whom felt able to let her out of their sight, she was swept up to a cool white bedroom that looked out upon a garden full of flowers and trees, where there was the luxury of unlimited fresh water to wash in. But it was disconcerting to discover that her uncle having decided that her luggage had better be returned to Boston, her trunks were still on board the Norah Crayne; for barely ten minutes later Clayton had arrived, breathless from running, and hammered impatiently on the door demanding to see her immediately. This being out of the question until she had something better to wear than that dreadful dress, he had been forced to kick his heels downstairs while Mrs Fullbright left to arrange for the trunks to be sent from the ship, and Cressy helped her cousin out of the much mended black poplin, poured hot water and demanded answers to an endless stream of excited questions.
The luggage had arrived within the hour, but it was midday before Hero descended to the drawing-room. And though a careful application of calamine lotion had been unable to do more than minimize the spotted effect produced by a dozen mosquito bites and tone down that distressing bruised eye and jaw, a very creditable transformation had been wrought Freshly ironed folds of black sarsenet spread demurely over a crinoline whose hoops, though moderate, served to emphasize the slenderness of Hero’s waist while drawing attention to her admirable proportions, and her short-cropped hair, newly washed and freed from the stickiness of salt water and the sweat of die hot nights, curled about her head in a childish manner that was reminiscent of the style made fashionable earlier in the century by such beauties as Madame Récamier and the Lady Caroline Lamb.
The effect of those curls was undeniably frivolous and Hero regretted the dignity of that heavy chignon. But studying herself in the glass she was not too dissatisfied with her appearance, and had been able to go down to meet Clayton feeling slightly more like the stately Miss Hollis who had embarked on the Norah Crayney and less like the bedraggled castaway who had arrived that morning on a ship with a reputation, like that of her Captain, that did not bear investigation.
9
Clayton had not been alone, and Hero could only feel thankful for it, since she was a little uncertain as to how she should greet him. Their last me
eting had been an emotional one and she was not entirely sure what she had said, or how far she had committed herself But fortunately Aunt Abby and Uncle Nat, Cressy, Amelia and Lieutenant Larrimore had all been in the drawing-room; together with Captain Fullbright, who had leapt forward to wring her hand and offer gruff but heart-felt congratulations.
Hero replied to him politely but at random, for looking past his shoulder at Clayton, she was startled by the expression on that handsome, Byronic face.
Clay was standing stock still, staring at her with an unflattering mixture of shock, dismay and outraged incredulity, and it was instantly obvious that owing to the general turmoil no one had remembered to warn him that his love was not in her customary looks. Hero’s heart sank while the colour rose painfully to her cheeks, but he recovered himself almost immediately and came quickly to meet her, both hands outstretched:
“Hero—Oh, my dear!”
He brushed past Captain Fullbright, brusquely interrupting the older man’s congratulations, and grasping her hands lifted them and kissed them passionately: “I can’t believe it!” said Clay emotionally: “We had given up all hope. They told us that there was no chance of your surviving in such a sea, and I thought I should go out of my mind!”
Hero looked down at his bent head and then above it at the other faces in the green-shuttered, white-walled room. At Uncle Nathaniel blowing his nose to disguise his feelings, Captain and Mrs Fullbright radiating relief, Cressy and Aunt Abby smiling with wet eyes and Lieutenant Larrimore looking carefully at nothing. There was something in the Englishman’s expression—something that she had no time to define—that deepened the hot colour in her face and made her suddenly aware of embarrassment and a new and entirely unfamiliar feeling of panic.