by M. M. Kaye
It is all over, thought Cholé. We have lost…She began to run again, but more slowly now, because she was blinded by tears; and by the time she was ushered into the British Consul’s presence she was crying so uncontrollably that it took that embarrassed bachelor a full five minutes to discover what it was that she was trying to tell him.
Colonel George Edwards, small and spare in the hard sunlight, stepped briskly up to the carved and bullet-scarred door of the Heir-Apparent’s house and tapped peremptorily upon it with his walking stick; and when at last it creaked open, Bargash came out weeping, and handed his sword to the Consul.
Dan and a party of the Daffodil’s men escorted the defeated rebel to the Palace, and having given him into the custody of the Sultan’s guards, returned to their ship. And it was only as the Daffodil moved back to her moorings that Dan saw the Virago, and realized that Captain Frost had returned. But by then he was too tired to care.
He glanced at the schooner where she rode at anchor between a two-masted Arab dhow and a gaily painted baghlah from Cutch, and wondered fleetingly what shady business her owner had been engaged in on the coast north of Mombasa. He took it for granted that it had involved some questionable chicanery, and also that any cargo Rory Frost had landed or was about to land would be found, on inspection, to be blameless. All the same he would, on a normal occasion, have inspected it. But now he found that he could raise no interest in the Virago or the transactions, illegal or otherwise, of her Captain. Or, for that matter, in anything else. He was feeling ill and bad-tempered and inclined to think that life was a dreary and savourless business; and his arm was giving him a good deal of pain, for he had refused to keep it in a sling and gone ashore that morning with it thrust uncomfortably into a sleeve that had not been designed to accommodate bandages.
“I see Rory’s back,” observed the Assistant-Surgeon meditatively: “A pity we lost him. Young Ruete says that he’s brought back half-a-dozen horses from somewhere over on the mainland, and that they were landed an hour or so ago, just before we got back from the Palace. Sounds innocent enough. But then Rory’s transactions always do. It’s the smell of them that’s wrong. What do you suppose he’s been up to?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Dan indifferently; and went down to his cabin to try to snatch a little rest before going ashore once more to accompany Colonel Edwards and Commander Adams of the Assaye to the Palace.
Majid returned to his city that same afternoon in impressive state; attended by his ministers and escorted by his troops and the British naval contingent who had left to fight a battle and stayed to blow up Marseilles, The grateful citizens, thankful to see the end of hostilities, received them as though they had been a conquering army returning loaded with laurels, and they marched through cheering crowds and a rain of flowers and rice that showered down upon them from every balcony, window and rooftop. The foreign community too had turned out in force to watch the festivity and raise their hats as the Sultan rode by. Among them Monsieur Rene Dubail with his family and the members of his consulate; for whatever his private feelings on the matter. Monsieur Dubail, as the diplomatic representative of his country, had no intention of appearing to snub the winner of the recent contest, even though his Government had favoured the cause of the loser, and for reasons of their own would have greatly preferred see Bargash in the role of victor. Well, that could still happen one day, thought the Consul philosophically. Time was on his side and he might yet inherit his brother’s throne in the normal manner. In the meantime, however, policy dictated that Majid’s triumph should be accepted with a good grace, and Monsieur Dubail therefore lifted his hat, smiled indulgently and bowed as the Sultan passed.
Back once more in his Palace Majid had called a Durbar of princes, chiefs and nobles to decide what had best be done with his rebellious brother. He had refused to consider such penalties as death or imprisonment, and at its conclusion summoned the British Consul to hear the Durbar’s decision. “We are all agreed,” he informed Colonel Edwards—not entirely truthfully. “And it is our desire that my brother, Seyyid Bargash, be given into your charge, and that you should do with him what you think fit.”
If the Colonel was unprepared for this bland transference of responsibility he did not show it, but bowed and suggested that, in his opinion, the best method of dealing with the Heir-Apparent and restoring peace to His Highness’s dominions would be to desire the Seyyid Bargash to sign a formal undertaking never to plot or wage war against the Sultan again, to quit the Sultan’s territories and to proceed to any port that the British Consul might select.
The document had been signed in the presence of the packed Durbar, and having taken a solemn oath on the Koran to abide by it, Bargash listened in silence while Majid ordered him to embark for India on the Assaye. After which he walked out with an escort of the Sultan’s troops to say farewell to his sisters.
Cholé had wept so many tears during the last frantic hours that she had none left to weep. But her dry-eyed despair had been more heartrending than Méjé’s noisy lamentation or Salmé‘s broken sobs, and Bargash had torn himself away at last, racked with grief and emotion and raging against Fate and all those who had failed him. Little Abd-il-Aziz had not been one of these, for the boy had pleaded to be allowed to go with his older brother into exile, and Majid had given his consent.
They had embarked together, and from the windows of Beit-el-Tani their sisters had seen them go, and watched the Assaye weigh anchor and move slowly out of harbour on the evening tide, her sails rose-pink in the sunset and her wake a silver ribbon across the darkening sea.
“He is gone,” whispered Cholé. “It is all over. Everything is finished…it is the end.”
But though the great enterprise was over and Bargash had gone, the aftermath had still to be faced. And even Cholé could not have known how bitter it would prove to find themselves alone and ostracized.
Their riches had been dissipated, and many of their slaves whom they had armed and sent to support Bargash had been killed or wounded at Marseilles, Their friends fell away from them and their foes watched them jealously for fear that they might instigate new plots; even the merchants of the city would call no longer at Beit-el-Tani except under cover of darkness. Worst of all, their support of Bargash had lost them the loyalty and affection of all those half-brothers and sisters, relatives and connections, who had made up the gay and heterogeneous family of Sultan Saïd, and they were never again to be part of it. Only one person had stood by them, and that, by the irony of fate, the one who had most cause to hate them.
Majid could not be persuaded to punish his sisters, though his ministers and his family complained that he was weak and ineffectual, and the townspeople who only a few days before had pelted him with flowers and greeted him as a victorious General laughed at him in the bazaars, and despised him for his clemency.
“It is all over,” Cholé had said. “Everything is finished…It is the end.’ And for her this was true. But for Salmé it was a beginning: because now once again she had leisure to steal up to the rooftop after sundown. Not to mourn for Bargash and the ruin of their hopes, as Cholé was doing, but to watch a young man from Hamburg entertain his friends in a lamplit room on the far side of the street.
In the anxious days of the conspiracy she had been too busy to go, for there had been so many letters to write and so many plans to be made. But Beit-el-Tani, once a burning centre of excitement, activity and intrigue, was quiet now, for no one visited Salmé and her sister any more, and their days were long and empty and idle.
There was time now to think and to regret. And Cholé wept her beauty away while Méjé moaned and lamented, explaining over and over again to anyone who would listen that she had always known that this would happen—she had told them so, and she had been right! But for Salmé there was time to think of young Wilhelm Ruete, and to peep at him through the chinks of the shutter that guarded the passage window. Time now—too much time—to watch him and his friends from the darkness
of a flat-topped roof. A roof so near her own that by leaning over the parapet and stretching out her hand she could almost have touched the hand of—of someone who had done the same from the opposite side of the street…
Visit those you love, though your abode be distant.
And clouds and darkness have arisen between you…
No man of her own race would say such words to her now, for what Arab of rank would wish to marry a woman who had been concerned in the rebellion, and was no longer rich or received by her own relations? The clouds and the darkness had indeed arisen, and Salmé, who was young and sad and very lonely, watched Wilhelm Ruete and dreamed impossible dreams.
“One can’t help feeling sorry for the poor little thing,” said Olivia Credwell, drinking morning coffee at the Hollises. “None of the Sultan’s family will speak to any of them now, and Cholé seems to have been most unkind to her, and accused her of disloyalty or something. You can see that she’s terribly distressed about it all. I’m teaching her to speak English, and she says she would like to learn German too, so I’ve asked Frau Lessing to tea on Thursday to meet her, and I do hope you will both come too. She would be so happy to see you.”
Hero had returned a non-committal answer, while Cressy continued to stare out at the garden as though she did not know that she had been addressed, and said nothing at all. But their lack of enthusiasm passed unnoticed by Olivia, who said a trifle anxiously:
“I did ask Thérèse, but she won’t come, because she says that now that the whole thing has failed—the rebellion I mean—we would do much better to keep away from Beit-el-Tani and not be too friendly with anyone who had anything to do with it. But then as we ourselves had something to do with it, I don’t see how…I told her I thought she was being a little hard, but she assured me that on the contrary she was only being wise. Oh, well!”
Olivia paused to heave a deep sigh, and then added with regretful honesty: “I fear that I myself have never been very wise. I think being kind is better, and I really do feel that we should all try and be as kind as possible to poor little Salmé. And to the others, of course.”
“The others don’t want us to be kind to them,” said Hero. “They’ve made that perfectly clear!”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed Olivia with another sigh. “You would think, after all we have done for them…Do you know that Cholé positively refused to see me when I called to commiserate? Naturally, I assumed at the time that she was feeling too upset to see anyone. But now I believe it was quite deliberate, because I have been several times since then and she has always sent someone to say that she cannot see me—and almost rudely, too! I cannot think why she should behave in such an odd manner after all that one has tried to do. Though of course I do feel terribly sorry for her.”
Mrs Credwell extracted an acceptance to her tea-party and went away, and Hero said: “The trouble with Olivia is that she really cannot see why Cholé does not wish to see her.”
“Can you?” asked Cressy listlessly.
“I think so. I guess it’s because Olivia is English and Cholé can’t forget that.”
Cressy continued to gaze unseeingly out of the window at the sunlit garden where the butterflies lilted idly about the jasmine bushes and the over-blown roses, and after a minute she said almost inaudibly: “Olivia tried to help them.”
“I know. But it would be asking too much of Cholé to expect her to forget that it was the English Consul and English seamen who defeated her brother and helped kill a whole heap of his men. And the English, too, who have shipped him off to one of their own Colonies, where I’ve no doubt they’ll keep him to fit in with future plans of their own. They hadn’t the least right to interfere, and when I think of them opening fire on that house—”
“Don’t!” said Cressy in a suffocated voice.
“I’m sorry,” apologized Hero contritely.’ I know you feel as badly about it as I do—you couldn’t possibly feel worse, because you haven’t anything to blame yourself for, and I have! But at least you did your best to prevent the Prince’s house being fired on, and you will always be able to console yourself with that.”
“Yes…Yes, I can always console myself with that, can’t I?”
There was an odd note of hysteria in Cressy’s voice, and Hero said in some astonishment: “You aren’t still thinking about that Lieutenant, are you Cressy?”
Cressy did not reply, and presently Hero said earnestly: “I assure you honey, he is not worth worrying your head about. Any man who could permit himself to be used in such a manner is no better than a hired bravo, and the sooner you forget him the better. I am not saying that it was not exceedingly courageous of you to try to persuade him not to act the part of a mercenary, but you might have known that it would prove useless. I do not think he is at all the sort of person whose better nature one could appeal to. Too hidebound and unimaginative. And solid.”
“I should not have gone,” said Cressy in a whisper.
“There I cannot agree with you!” said Hero vigorously. “We should always do what we conceive to be our duty, no matter how painful the consequences. You were quite right to make the attempt.”
Cressy gave a small, hysterical laugh and turned from the window, and Hero was shocked to see how white and stricken she looked. She said on a high note:
“That is what Dan said. Don’t you see, that was exactly what he said. And that is why he did it! We talk a lot about people having ‘a sense of duty,’ but it seems that when an Englishman is said to have one, he really has. It’s very funny, isn’t it?”
She began to laugh and found that she could not stop.
21
The picnic had been Aunt Abby’s idea. They had all, she said, been cooped up indoors too long and Cressy was beginning to look downright peaked. But now that the Bargash rebellion had ended and the city returned to normal, there was no longer any reason why the girls should not get into the open country and breathe a little fresh air. Dr Kealey, whom she had consulted over the matter of her daughter’s pale cheeks and loss of spirits, prescribed an iron tonic and sea bathing, and suggested that more exercise and less sitting about in shuttered rooms might be beneficial to all the ladies. A piece of advice which her husband heartily endorsed:
“There’s been a damn’ sight too much moping around, if you ask me,” said Uncle Nat, who had not in fact been asked, “and it’s getting my goat. Why the heck any daughter of mine has to go around looking like a drowned kitten just because a good-for-nothing Arab rebel has gotten his just deserts, I’ll be darned if I know! She’d no business taking sides in the first place, and even less business carrying on mooning and sulking because the candidate she fancied has taken a licking.”
“I don’t think it’s that,” said Aunt Abby, pondering the matter.’ Though of course, being so friendly with those sisters of his, she was disappointed for their sakes. But you have to admit that the whole affair was most unpleasant…and not being able to put a foot out of doors, either.”
“All the more reason for putting one out now. Besides, the rains will be starting up soon, so you’d better all get out while you’ve got the chance, because once they get going you’ll have to stay indoors whether you want to or not. It’s a pity your daughter can’t learn to keep herself occupied in the way my niece can.”
Aunt Abby, recognizing the implied rebuke of that ‘your’ sighed and said submissively: “Yes, indeed. Dear Hero is really a most industrious girl. She tells me that it is quite clear that until she masters the language she can do little practical good in Zanzibar, and she has certainly been applying herself most seriously to her studies. She was asking Dr Kealey a great many questions when he called this morning, and I am afraid she means to do something about the local sanitation: I know she used to help in that hospital, but I still do not think it is a very suitable subject for a young girl, though when I tried to change the conversation she told me that I had no social conscience. I do hope that is not true, but I own I cannot get so—so angry about t
hings. Not that Hero gets angry. She is much more like your brother in that. She just decides what is right and is quite calm about it. And firm,” added Aunt Abby with another faint sigh.
“Gets that from her Aunt Lucy,” commented Uncle Nat with a grin: “Lucy was always right, even in the schoolroom; no arguing with her. No arguing with Hero, either!”
“I confess I do not try,” admitted Aunt Abby simply.
“Clay does,” said her husband with a short laugh.
Aunt Abby looked worried. She had thought for so long that Hero would be just the wife for Clay, but now, suddenly, she was not so sure. There was still the money of course: Harriet’s fortune and now Barclay’s handsome competence. She had always hoped that Clay would marry a well-endowed wife, because whatever people might say to the contrary, money made a great difference to life, and Clay was ambitious and handicapped by the lack of adequate private means. But Abby was not mercenary, and though at the time she had been bitterly offended by her brother-in-law’s insistence that Hero and Clayton were totally unsuited to each other, of late she had begun to wonder if perhaps Barclay had known his daughter a great deal better than she knew her son, and that what he had really meant was that Hero would not suit Clayton.
Abigail Hollis, after the manner of mothers, looked at her son through spectacles so strongly tinted with rose that it is doubtful if she ever saw his true colouring at all. But at least she knew something of his character and tastes, and this knowledge had led her to suppose that what dear Clayton needed was a wife who would settle him down and act as a safe anchor to hold him back from sailing off into dangerous and uncharted seas. She had thought once that Hero would be just the right girl to do this. A steady, sensible young woman who would be able to counteract a certain instability that her son had inherited from his dashing father. But the more she saw of her niece the less certain she became that a marriage between them would prove a success.