Trade Wind (45 page)

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 things. 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.

Money and high ideals were all very well, thought Aunt Abby uneasily, but would not a little more docility—a little more tolerance, leavened perhaps with a dash of frivolity—be even more desirable? Aunt Abby suspected that Hero might not be tolerant, and the prospect distressed her. Though it did not appear to worry Clay, and after all, he was the one it would most affect. Unless he had thought better of the whole idea? Now that she came to think of it, he was very often out these days and on the whole saw less of Hero than might have been expected. But then perhaps he was merely being wise, for propinquity was something that one could have too much of, and possibly it might be better if he did not come on the proposed picnic. She would make it an exclusively feminine party (so that they could follow Dr Kealey’s advice and find some secluded beach from which they could bathe), and announce it for next Tuesday, as Clay had already arranged to go shooting with Joe Lynch on that day.

Mr Hollis, who disliked eating his meals out of doors, had warmly approved this amendment, and his wife issued invitations to Mrs Kealey, Frau Lessing, Olivia Credwell and Jane Platt, and forgot her anxieties in plans for the preparation of cold pies, desserts and fruit drinks. The German Consul had lent them his own felucca, the
Grethe
, whose crew were trustworthy members of the Consulate guard, and on the following Tuesday Aunt Abby embarked her party and her picnic baskets and set off to sail gently up the coast and spend a refreshing day in the open air.

The weather had been perfect for such an expedition. The wind that day was no more than a gentle breeze, sufficient to temper the heat to tolerable proportions, but not, the hostess noted thankfully, capable of producing waves that were large enough to cause any discomfort to the
Grethe
’s passengers. But though Aunt Abby’s first care had been for the comfort of her guests, she had not been too occupied to notice her daughter’s behaviour as the
Grethe
moved down the harbour; or too simple to divine its cause.

The felucca had passed within less than a dozen yards of the
Daffodil
y and as they approached it Cressy had quickly changed her seat for one on the far side of the boat, and then looked back again as though she could not help herself: her face betraying her as clearly as though she had shouted her thoughts aloud.

Oh dear! So that’s it! I was afraid so
, thought Abigail. How agonizing the heart-aches of youth could be, and how comfortable it was to be done with all that. Though it did seem a little unfair that one should have to suffer the same pangs at second-hand on behalf of one’s children. First Clay and now Cressy! And neither of them, in their mother’s opinion, likely to be much happier in the near future.

For her own part, Abigail had taken a liking to Daniel Larrimore, whose manner towards her had always been admirable and whose patent devotion to her daughter she found touching. She had warmed towards him, and might easily have grown fond of him had not Clayton and Nathaniel’s dismay at the very idea of losing Cressida to a “foreigner’ made her feel that she should not give him any encouragement. But although there had been a time when the
Daffodil’s
arrival in harbour had been a signal that Lieutenant Larrimore could be expected to call at the American Consulate within the hour, he had not been there for some weeks now, and she had allowed herself to hope that the whole thing had died a natural death. Which, taking the viewpoint of her husband and son into account, was a distinct relief, since she herself had always suspected that her daughter was not nearly as indifferent to the Lieutenant’s attentions as she would have her family suppose.

Scanning Cressy’s strained face she was sure now that her suspicion had been correct, and she wondered what could have gone wrong. They had obviously quarrelled about something, but as she did not believe in forcing confidences and Cressy had not as yet chosen to confide in her, there was nothing much that she could do except hope that it would pass as these things did—though she knew that when one was young it was difficult to believe that. Cressy and Clayton…Aunt Abby sighed, and glancing towards the girl whom her son hoped to marry, was as startled by Hero’s expression as she had been disturbed by Cressy’s.