by M. M. Kaye
“Yes, he has, if you want to know. And I have occasionally been there. But not with Arab trollops!”
“I’m sorry Clay. But—but I had to ask. You do see that?”
But Clayton did not see it; or would not. He abandoned hurt reproach and became angry, and listening to him. Hero wondered why his anger should suddenly seem to her as unreal and as calculated as his initial reproach had been, and hating herself for the thought, could not dismiss it He was accusing her now of trumping up these wild and monstrous charges in order to deflect attention from her own unhappy situation, and it was difficult not to wonder if he had only ceased being hurt and dignified—and cautious!—simply because she herself had begun to apologize, and so he felt the danger to be past and could now afford to be angry?
“Don’t think I can’t understand it,” said Clayton, returning at last to a more reasonable tone of voice, “because I can. I can fully appreciate your feelings, and you have all my sympathy. And in spite of what has happened, my love. But that you should try, in order to forget your own im-happy predicament, to persuade yourself that my case is no better than yours, and to accuse me of sharp practice and immoral behaviour, is unworthy of you. I have not blamed you for what has occurred, for you could not have prevented it, and we will agree never to talk of it again but to forget that it ever happened.”
“You mean you are still prepared to marry me?”
“Of course, dear.”
“That is very noble of you Clay. Very…generous.”
“It would be ignoble and ungenerous of me if I were to cast you off for something that was no fault of yours. I have told you, we will forget it.”
“Even if I have his child?”
“Hero! “Clayton’s face was suddenly scarlet with rage. “I don’t know how you can bring yourself to say such a thing, and I refuse to discuss it.”
“But if we are still to be married we shall have to discuss it.”
“We are not going to do so now! I should have thought that you would have had more delicacy than to…But you are not yourself. You are shocked and upset and I don’t wonder at it. It would be better if we did not talk of these things until you are in a calmer frame of mind. And better still if they were never mentioned again!”
Hero said tiredly: “There are some things you cannot run away from Clay, and this is one of them. I have done a great many ill-advised things because I would not stop and think for long enough before doing them. But at least I ran towards them, and not away.”
“It is not ‘running away’ to refuse to take part in an unprofitable and deeply distasteful discussion of a situation that may never arise,” retorted Clay angrily.
“It arose with Zorah,” said Hero.
The colour deepened in Clayton’s face and his handsome mouth twitched and looked ugly, but he controlled himself with a palpable effort and said: “There is not the least need for you to degrade yourself by mentioning such a creature, my dear. May I tell Colonel Edwards that you will see him, or would prefer me to see him on your behalf?”
“What is it that he wants to know?”
“Where he may find Frost and the Virago.”
“I don’t know that.”
“But you must have some idea! Were you on the schooner all the time? And if so, where did they land you? On what part of the Island?”
“I don’t know,” repeated Hero, her voice devoid of expression and her eyes looking past him as though they did not see him: “I will think about it But at the moment I feel as you do; that it is something I do not wish to talk about I am sure you will understand that.”
“But this is an entirely different matter!” protested Clay. “It is something we’ve got to know, and the sooner we know it the more chance we shall have of coming up with the man.”
“I’m sorry, but I do not feel well enough to discuss it at present,” said Hero.
No amount of argument or persuasion had been able to move her from that, and turning a deaf ear and a white, stubborn face to him she had gone up to her room, and shutting herself into it, unlocked her jewel-case and removed from it a small packet of letters tied with a piece of ribbon; those well-phrased but hardly passionate love-letters that she had received from Clayton, and cherished and re-read and admired so much for the nobility of their sentiments.
She glanced through them now, searching for something. And when at last she found what she was looking for she put it on one side, and locking the rest of the letters away again, sat for a long time staring at her own reflection in the glass.
She knew that what she was about to do was mean and underhand. But somehow Clay had not convinced her as she had expected to be convinced, and she had to be sure: she had to know. Not only for her own sake, but because if Clay had indeed been responsible for Zorah’s death, he had invited retaliation; and the fact that she had paid the score on his behalf was immaterial, for Zorah too had been innocent of offence.
If there was any justification for the uncivilized revenge that Rory Frost had taken, then she could not be responsible for handing him over to be executed without trial. It would have been different if they had merely intended to run him out of the Island and to forbid him to enter any territory owing allegiance to the Sultan of Zanzibar. Or even sentence him to a term of imprisonment and confiscate his property and his ship. But if Clayton had lied she would not give information that might lead directly to the Captain’s death, and therefore she could see no one and speak to no one until she knew. And if in order to gain the proof she needed she must stoop to spying and deceit, then she was prepared to do that too.
Hero drew a long breath and reaching resolutely for a pair of scissors, carefully cut off the last four inches of a letter written in this house over a year ago, and received less than a week before she set sail for Zanzibar on the Norah Crayne: a four-inch slip of paper bearing only a dozen words—the very last that Clay had ever written to her: ‘Come as soon and as quickly as you can. Ever your devoted C.’
Hero folded it carefully, and enclosing it in a blank envelope summoned Fattûma and gave her careful instructions:
“It must be given into Madame Tissot’s own hand, you understand Fattûma, and when there is no one with her. And she is not to know who has sent it, so you must not take it yourself, but send one of the gardeners, or the water-boy, and tell him that I will pay him well if he sees that it is put into her hand and says nothing. Can you do that?”
Fattûma nodded, her eyes bright with the love of intrigue and the prospect of a bribe, and an hour later she reported that the letter had been safely delivered. Hero handed over a liberal sum and then sent for the groom, Rahim, to whom she talked for several minutes in the garden. After which she returned to the house and asked her aunt for camphor drops, and pleading a headache, spent the remainder of the day in her own room professing herself quite prostrated and unable to see anyone—even Dr Kealey.
Colonel Edwards had fumed and Clayton and Lieutenant Larrimore had looked tight-lipped and grim, and even Nathaniel Hollis, with all his sympathy for his niece, considered that Hero was behaving in an unhelpful and hysterical manner and should at least summon up the strength to inform them where she had been and from what point on the Island she had returned. But Hero merely locked her bedroom door, and Aunt Abby startled her husband by roundly informing all four gentlemen that if they possessed the slightest degree of sensibility—which of course they did not!—they should be able to comprehend some small proportion of what her niece must be suffering, but that in such matters all men, without exception, were insensitive brutes!
Dusk was falling by the time that Fattûma scratched at Hero’s door to say that Rahim had brought Sherif from the stables, and Hero emerged at last and went downstairs; informing her uncle, whom she met in the hall, that she had asked to see the horse in order to satisfy herself that he was well. She went out to pat Sherif and give him sugar lumps, and to speak to Rahim, and when she came back into the house her face was so white and drawn that Unc
le Nat was seriously disturbed, and told her with a good deal of concern that she should be in bed.
“Yes,” said Hero numbly, but not as though she were agreeing with hun or had even heard what he had said, and without making any move to comply. She sat down with some suddenness in the nearest chair, and Mr Hollis, anxiously patting her lax hands, wondered if she were going to faint and was profoundly relieved at the unexpected sight of Colonel Edwards, who had called again in the hope that Miss Hollis might by now have imparted some useful information. The sight of that lady up and dressed, and therefore presumably recovered from her former prostration and in a more reasonable frame of mind raised his expectations. But all too briefly.
“You can’t talk to her now!” snapped Mr Hollis, exasperated. “Can’t you see the poor girl isn’t well? Fetch my wife—get a glass of water!”
He was interrupted by his niece, who straightened her back and said clearly and with composure: “I am perfectly well, thank you Uncle Nat, and quite able to answer any questions that Colonel Edwards may wish to put to me.”
“That is indeed kind of you. Miss Hollis,” said the Colonel, studying her colourless face a little anxiously. “I appreciate it. Can we talk somewhere where it is a little more private?”
“I have nothing to say that cannot be said here,” announced Hero, making no attempt to move.
“Oh—er—quite so. In that case, all we wish to know is if you have any idea where either Frost or his ship are now, and if you could tell us where you were taken after you were abducted.”
“I was not abducted,” said Hero.
“What!” both gentlemen stared at her, dumbfounded. Her uncle, the first to recover, begged her with some tartness to pull herself together and not to talk nonsense.
“It is not nonsense,” said Hero, telling a flat and deliberate lie for the first time in her life, and proceeding to embroider it: “Captain Frost had been informed that a mob of men from the dhows were about to attack the consulates, and as he did not think it wise for me to remain here, he removed me to a place of greater safety, and sent me back with a suitable escort as soon as the danger was over. That is all.”
Uncle Nathaniel said explosively: “I never heard such goddamned rubbish in my life, and if you think I’m going to swallow a tale like that! Now see here. Hero—”
The Colonel lifted a deprecatory hand and said: “Just a minute. Might I ask, Miss Hollis, why Frost should not have taken Mr Mayo and your grooms to safety also? Or have sent any message to your family?”
“I imagine that he thought that the men could look after themselves, but that a woman might have suffered worse things than a few injuries at the hands of a mob. In any case, there was little time in which to argue. Mr Mayo misunderstood the situation, which is not surprising; and owing to the trouble in the city it proved impossible to send any message.”
Mr Hollis said angrily: “You must be plumb crazy to lie like this!”
Hero rose and shook out her skirts, and said in a remote and colourless voice: “I am sorry; but that is all I intend to say, and I think you will find that it is confirmed by the men who brought me back here.”
“Well, yes. But—”
“Can you think of any better reason for Captain Frost’s action?” enquired Hero in a constrained voice.
Her uncle stared at her in wrathful bewilderment, but the British Consul nodded and said heavily: “I am afraid I can. And I presume that you have found out that it was true. I am sorry.”
He saw a faint flush of colour show briefly in Miss Hollis’s white cheeks, but she did not speak, and he said slowly: “Even if you think that Frost may to some extent have been justified, there can be no excuse for his other activities; or for his inciting these pirates to rioting and violence in order to further his own ends. Two men have died and others have been severely wounded as a result of it; there is that to be thought of. And even if your own abduction—your rescue if you prefer it—had never occurred, it would still make no difference at all to my decision to bring him to summary justice.”
“I know,” said Hero, in a voice that was barely more than a strained whisper: “But you must see that the…the circumstances do not permit my assisting you to bring him there. I am sorry.”
“So am I,” said the Colonel gently. He took her cold hand, and with a gesture that was entirely alien to him and totally unexpected, bent and kissed it with the stiff respect of an older and more formal age, and turned and went quietly away.
Nathaniel Hollis, recovering from his surprise, began to demand explanations but was checked by an equally unexpected sight. Hero was crying. Not noisily, as his Abby cried, or with childish, gulping sobs like Cressy, but making no sound: the tears brimming from her wide-open eyes and running helplessly down her face to drip off her chin. He had never seen his niece cry before, and after the dry-eyed stubbornness she had displayed since her return on the previous night had begun to think she was incapable of it. But the sight of that silent weeping disturbed him a great deal more than any more vocal display of emotion would have done.
“Now, now. Hero,” said Uncle Nat helplessly. “Now, now, dear—”
He took her arm and propelling her upstairs, sent for his wife, who said wildly and unjustly that she would not be at all surprised if dear Hero did not go into a decline and that it was all his fault!
Hero allowed herself to be undressed and put into a nightgown and a muslin wrapper without protest, and Aunt Abby, hurrying off to prepare a soothing draught, passed her son coming up the staircase three steps at a time and with a face of thunder.
“It’s those fool men worrying her,” said Aunt Abby indignantly. “So inconsiderate! But she’ll be all the better for a good night’s sleep. Where are you going, Clay? No, you can’t see her—! Clay!”
But Clayton had paid not the slightest heed to his parent’s scandalized protest, and brushing past her had gone straight to Hero’s door, flung it open without knocking and banged it shut behind him. Aunt Abby heard the key turn in the lock, and went downstairs to inform her perplexed and disquieted husband that she did not know what the world was coming to.
Hero turned a white, ravaged face, but there was no surprise in it It was as though she had expected to see him and found nothing odd in the fact that he should burst into her bedroom without her leave and when she was dressed in no more than a nightdress and a thin, ruffled wrapper. Modesty had ceased to mean very much to her, and it was of no importance where and under what circumstances this interview should take place. It had to be got through and got over, and that was all that mattered.
Clayton jerked the key from the lock, and holding it clenched in his hand said furiously: “Say, what’s the meaning of this balderdash you’ve been telling Colonel Edwards? Have you gone out of your mind?”
Hero sat down wearily on the edge of her bed as though she found the effort to stand too great for her, and said tonelessly: “No, Clay, I have not Though it would not have been so strange if I had. I have just found out that part of what I was told about you was true, and now I cannot be sure that all the rest of it is not true as well. I think it must be.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I’m damned sure you don’t! If you’re still harping on that ridiculous pack of lies that Frost invented, I can only say—”
“Don’t say it. Clay. Please don’t! You see, I know now that you do keep a room in the town, and that Thérèse Tissot does meet you there. Perhaps you had your friend Mr Lynch take it in his name; or perhaps he uses it too. But I guess that doesn’t make much difference, does it?”
“You are being nonsensical and you know it! Are you really going to lose your head and behave in an unbalanced manner on the mere word of a slanderous scoundrel who cannot supply a shred of proof?”
“But I have the proof.”
Clayton’s face turned from red to white, and he said between his teeth: “I don’t believe it! You’re inventing.”
“You shouldn’t judge everyone
by yourself, Clay.”
“You couldn’t There was no…”
“No what? Do you mean that there was no written contract? No, I don’t suppose there was. I expect you counted on that. And on my taking your word against anyone else’s if anything of this should ever come to my ears. You were very nearly right. That’s why I had to have proof.”
Clayton said harshly: “There can be no proof of something that isn’t true, and if someone else has been spinning you a tale you’ll find it’ll turn out to be just another lie.”
“No one has been spinning me a tale. I—I don’t like to tell you this, Clay, because I am not proud of it But…I had to know, and so I cut off part of the last letter you wrote me and sent it to Thérèse. It wasn’t even signed with your name; only with an initial, and if she had not known your handwriting it would have meant nothing to her, because I did not send it by anyone she would know.”
Clay said scornfully: “And you’re going to pretend that she answered it? Hero, this is madness!”
“No, she did not answer it. Not in writing. But I sent Rahim to watch a house with two doors in a cul-de-sac near the Changu Bazaar, and to tell me how many people went in at the side door, and who they were. There was only one, and though she wore a heavy veil and he did not recognize her at first, he followed her back through the streets, and he says it was Madame Tissot. So you see…”
There was a brief moment of silence, and then Clay said angrily but with less assurance: “And what is that supposed to prove?”
“That she knew the writing, and knew too where to go to meet the writer. For she didn’t come to this house, but to the one in the city, and I had not told Rahim who to watch for or even suggested that it might be a European. I hope you will not tell me that it was a coincidence, because I shall not be able to believe you.”
Clayton said sharply: “Rahim must have made a mistake. He must have mistaken—” He stopped, realizing the futility of such words, and Hero said quietly and without anger, but as though it was something she must know: “Why did you do it, Clay?”