“I hope, sir,” said Clay with a trace of acid, “that your preference for him isn’t going to make you encourage him in his pursuit of my sister?”
A suggestion of a twinkle lighted the Consul’s sleepy grey eyes, and he said: “Far as I can see, he doesn’t seem to need much encouragement. But I don’t think you need worry. Cressy may have been a mite interested in him once, but that’s only natural when you consider that until recently he was just about the only eligible young man around the place.”
“Eligible!” snorted Clayton with scorn.
“Well, let’s say ‘good-looking,’ if you like it better that way. But I didn’t see her throw him so much as a kind word last time he put in here, and she didn’t seem any too pleased to see him today either. Though I’ll allow that isn’t always a good sign where women are concerned! Seems to me she’s cooled off him since that young Italian sprig began to pay her attention; he certainly seems to have been around here a lot. And your friend Joe Lynch, too. I reckon they don’t come to see me—or your mother, either! When you get around to marrying, don’t raise daughters, Clay. They’re quite a problem.”
“It begins to look as though my problem will be getting married at all,” said Clayton morosely.
“You mean to Hero?”
“Who else? I thought it was all fixed up, but now…Oh heck, I suppose I shouldn’t have spoken as I did, but it kind of jolted me—hearing that it was Frost who’d picked her up. And then her laughing at me and defending that skunk. I guess I lost my temper and spoke out of turn. But dam it, it was only natural to suppose that a man like that would go the whole way—or try to. It wouldn’t have been her fault if he had, and no one could have blamed her. But I suppose if she says that nothing happened—”
“You can take it that nothing did,” finished his stepfather firmly. “She’s always been a truthful girl. Hero. A durned sight too truthful for comfort at times! I know your Ma is set on the match, but I wouldn’t have thought you and she would suit, Clay. Always surprised me that you should have taken to her. Not your kind, I’d have said. Too damned hard to handle; which was Barclay’s fault…he gave her her head too much.”
“I can handle her,” said Clayton shortly.
“Maybe you can. I certainly hope so, if you intend to marry her. But if you do, I guess you’d better start by making your apologies. The poor girl’s had a rough time of it. Losing her Pa, setting off alone from the opposite side of the world, nearly drowned, rescued by a rascally slaver, face bashed about and her looks lost. And what does she get when she fetches up here? A tirade on the subject of her lost reputation instead of the open arms and tears of joy she had every right to expect from you. You know. Clay, your trouble is that you don’t look before you leap. Or if you do, you sure don’t look long enough!”
Mr Nathaniel Hollis pulled his lip again, nodded sagely at his step-son and returned to his study without waiting to see if his advice was followed or not.
10
Hero slammed the bedroom door behind her with such violence that the key leapt from the lock and slid away across the polished floor. But before she had time to do more than stoop and retrieve it, the door opened and shut again, and Cressy was there; breathless and sympathetic:
“Oh, Hero darling, don’t cry! Please don’t cry. I’m sure it’s all a mistake. I’m sure Clay didn’t mean to offend you.”
“I’m not crying,” raged Hero, flinging herself face downwards on the bed and burying her face in the pillow. “And he did mean it!”
She wished Cressy would go away. Or that she herself could go away. Everything had turned out wrong and she ought never to have come out here. They had been right after all—Cousin Josiah, Aunt Lucy Strong, Miss Penbury and all those elderly and disapproving Craynes who had shaken their heads over her and prophesied disaster. They had warned her that she would live to regret such rash and headstrong behaviour, and she had refused to listen to them because she had wanted to travel and to see the world. To see Zanzibar. To see Clayton…
How could Clay have brought himself to speak to her like that? How could he! Hero struck her pillow with a clenched fist and became aware that the door must have opened once more, for her aunt’s voice, tearful but authoritative, was saying: “Run away, Cressy. I’m sure dear Hero does not want to speak to you just at present Leave her alone, there’s a good girl.”
Cressy withdrew reluctantly and Hero sat up, feeling a little ashamed of herself, and avoiding her aunt’s anxious gaze, went to the wash-handstand to dip her handkerchief into the rose-painted ewer and mop at her angry eyes and flushed cheeks. Aunt Abby said coaxingly: “You must try and make allowances for Clay, honey. He has been distracted with grief. You can’t know what a shock it was to all of us when the ship arrived and they told us that you had been drowned. Specially to Clay. He is so devoted to you, dear. He loves you so much. You do know that, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t!” said Hero tremulously. “Not if he can accuse me of…How could he say such things? If that’s what he thinks of me!”
“But honey,” quavered Aunt Abby, unaware of paraphrasing words that were being spoken at that precise moment by her son, “he did not mean that it was your fault. He would know you could not prevent…prevent anything.”
“Oh, couldn’t I!” retorted Hero, her eyes flashing. “As it happens, there was nothing to prevent. But if there had been, I would certainly have prevented it!”
Aunt Abby flushed and said hurriedly: “You cannot possibly know what you are talking about, honey. As an unmarried girl there are things that you do not at all understand—which Clay would have realized if only he had given himself time to think. I guess it was your defending this man Frost that upset him. Though I can fully understand your attitude. Naturally, you feel grateful to the man; and for my part I am quite prepared to believe that he behaved with the utmost propriety towards you.”
“Then you are wrong, Aunt, because he did nothing of the sort He was rude and insufferable, and he had the impertinence to treat me as though I were ten years old and—and of no importance at all.”
The indignation in her niece’s voice brought a sudden and unexpected smile to lighten Aunt Abby’s troubled face, and she said with a quiver of amusement: “Did he indeed, dear? Well, at least that was preferable to being made an object of gallantry.”
“Gallantly? I don’t believe that man knows the meaning of the word!”
“I did not mean that kind of gallantry,” reproved Aunt Abby.’ I meant—well, just supposing he had attempted to kiss you?”
“He did kiss me,” said Hero shortly.
“Oh, no!” gasped Aunt Abby in quite another voice.
“But not in the least in the way you imagine,” finished Hero bitterly. “He was certainly not being gallant, and he “did not consider me in the least degree attractive. I believe it was merely because he felt sorry for me.”
“Oh mercy!” moaned Aunt Abby, groping helplessly round in search of the hartshorn. “Yes, I’m sure he was. But I do trust that you will not repeat that sort of thing to Clay. About being kissed, I mean. Or to anyone else. You should never have allowed such a thing. People would not believe…I mean, they would think…”
“The worst, of course. You do not have to tell me that, Aunt Abby. Possibly I should feel flattered that you and Clay appear so ready to believe that my charms must have impelled Captain Frost to make an assault on my virtue. But the truth of the matter is that he did not consider that I had any charms at all, and he was not in the least interested in either me or my virtue. He thought I was a nuisance. And I was! I got in his way.”
Hero returned to sit on the edge of her bed, and jerking the wet handkerchief between her hands, said: “He was engaged upon some business that he did not wish me to know about, and he was not at all pleased to have me on his ship, let me tell you. Aunt! He even locked me in the cabin twice, in case I should see something that he did not wish seen.”
“Locked you in?” demanded Aun
t Abby, affronted. “How exceedingly impertinent! What can he have been doing?”
“I wish I knew. I think he was smuggling something—slaves or opium or contraband of some kind. I wouldn’t put anything past him. And I must say. Aunt Abby, that I cannot help agreeing with Clay that I would rather anyone had rescued me than that—that slaver! It is too humiliating to have to be grateful to a common criminal: and for something that would never have come about if he had known how to handle his ship.”
Hero brooded darkly for a moment or two, then her brow cleared, and rising abruptly she embraced her aunt with a fervour that set that afflicted lady’s cap askew, and said remorsefully: “No, that’s not quite true. It was my fault too, and I am only making excuses for myself. I should never have ventured on deck in such weather, and I am excessively sorry, Aunt. I have caused you all such a great deal of trouble and behaved very badly, and I don’t suppose Clay meant to be insulting. He merely lost his temper—as I did, too. Let us forget all about that, and be truly thankful instead of engaging in arguments and quarrels.”
Aunt Abby heaved a sigh of relief, and returning her niece’s embrace with equal fervour, said warmly: “That’s my sweet, sensible child. Clay shall apologize, and then we need not mention the matter again. And I think, honey, it would be an excellent thing if you were to keep within doors and in seclusion for at least a week, to give those cuts and bruises time to heal before you meet any of our community here. We will get Doctor Kealey to see what he can do for you, and in the meantime we can give out that you are in need of rest and quiet; which is a thing that will be quite understood by everyone. Perhaps if we applied a little witch-hazel?’…”
Aunt Abby hurried away to look into the matter of salves and lotions, but no sooner had she departed than the door opened again without ceremony to admit her daughter.
“Hero, did you really mean it?” demanded Cressy in a voice breathless with excitement and awe. “Did Rory Frost really kiss you?”
“Cressy, you’ve been listening at doors,” accused Hero. “It’s too bad of you and I shall tell your Mama.”
“You wouldn’t be so mean,” said Cressy confidently. “Not when you must know that I could not resist it. You can have no idea how tiresome it is always being told to leave the room as soon as anyone mentions anything in the least interesting. After all, it is not as though I were a child. Why, Mama was already married to Clay’s father by the time she was my age; yet I once heard her telling Olivia Credwell that a young girl should not only be innocent, but in some matters entirely ignorant Such flummery! I do not agree at all that one should be ignorant, so of course I have no choice but to listen at doors. You must see that.”
“It’s underhand,” said Hero severely.
“But it’s sensible. And anyway, if I hadn’t listened I wouldn’t have heard about Captain Frost kissing you. I had so hoped that you would decide to marry Clay, but now I suppose you will have to marry him instead.”
“Marry who?” demanded Hero, bewildered.
“Rory Frost, of course.”
“Marry that—that pirate! Whatever for? What on earth are you talking about, Cressy?”
“But Hero, if he kissed you…”
“If you imagine that a girl has to marry any man who kisses her, then all I can say is that you have not listened at enough doors!” retorted Hero with vigour.
Cressy threw a quick look over her shoulder, and lowering her voice to a whisper said: “But supposing you have a baby?”
Her cousin sat down abruptly upon the ottoman and burst out laughing, and Cressy, looking mortally offended said: “I don’t see anything to laugh at. Everyone knows that you don’t have to be married to have a baby and that it’s the kissing that counts.”
“Cressy darling,” besought Hero, recovering her breath, “do take that expression off your face. You look just like Clay did when I laughed in the drawing-room, and I am not making fun of you any more than I was of him. But don’t you ever use your eyes? I mean, animals and things? Of course you don’t have a baby just because you kiss someone. Why, even Clay kissed me once, and you must surely have been kissed under the mistletoe a dozen times.”
“Oh, that!” said Cressy, subsiding on to the far end of the ottoman. “That’s quite different. Just boys pecking at your cheek with everyone looking on and laughing. I’m sure that being kissed by a man when you are all alone with him must be quite different.”
“Not all that different,” admitted Hero, trying to recall what she had felt on the only occasion when Clayton had kissed her. It certainly had not been the thrilling and heart-stopping affair that she had once imagined it must be, and honesty compelled her to admit that Captain Frost’s insultingly casual caress had been infinitely more disturbing. The reflection did nothing to soothe her, and glancing at her cousin’s pretty, eager face she said a shade tartly: “I expect you’ll find out one day. Hasn’t Lieutenant Larrimore tried to kiss you yet?”
A bright wave of colour flooded up to bum Cressy’s cheeks, and she said stiffly: “Certainly not! And he is never likely to.”
“Isn’t he? Then I have been misled, for Captain Fullbright told me that he fancied you had a fondness for the Lieutenant.”
“Captain Fullbright,” said Cressy with dignity, “should mind his own business. No, I do not have a fondness for Lieutenant Larrimore. I mean, he does not have a fondness for me. I mean, he—we…Oh, Hero, it is all so difficult! You don’t know what I have been through.”
She cast herself into her cousin’s arms, and Hero sighed, and heroically abandoning her own problems in favour of Cressy’s, said encouragingly: “Tell me about it.”
“It’s Dan,” said Cressy, sitting up and speaking the name with a gasp of relief as though she had been waiting for this moment As indeed she had, since the subject was not one that she felt herself able to discuss with her Mama, while Clay, when appealed to, had been most unsympathetic and effectively put a stop to further confidences. True, there remained her friends Olivia Credwell and Thérèse Tissot But though she admired them both excessively they were not only married but a great deal older than herself: as well as being indirectly responsible (though they were unaware of this) for her present unhappy situation. It was therefore an inexpressible comfort to have someone nearer her own age to confide in.
“You mean Lieutenant Larrimore,” prompted Hero helpfully.
“Yes. You see he…we…well, I did like him. Hero. I mean I do like him. And I’m sure he likes me, although he has never actually said anything, you know. But he used to call a great deal whenever his ship was in port, and—” Cressy paused uncertainly, her brow puckered and her red lips drooping like a sad baby’s.
“Have you quarrelled?” asked Hero.
“In—in a way. He told me that I should not call on the Sultan’s sisters so often, and I said that I should do so as often as I chose, and that he had no right to criticize or to try to dictate to me. And he hasn’t any right! So then he said that it was because he did not like to see me becoming involved in anything unpleasant, and that if I did not know what I was doing, then Olivia and Thérèse ought to.”
“And what were you doing?” enquired Hero, interested.
“Nothing,” said Cressy, “nothing at all!” And added defiantly: “Though I do not mind telling you. Hero, that if there was anything I could do, I would do it. You see, it is like this…”
Judging from Cressy’s somewhat incoherent account, it had been Madame Tissot, the wife of a French merchant, and her friend Mrs Credwell, the widowed sister of Mr Hubert Platt of the British East African Coastal Trading Company, who had introduced Cressy and her Mama to the Sultan’s young half-sister, Salmé. The Seyyida Salmé, explained Cressy, was a daughter of the late Sultan, Seyyid Saïd, by a Circassian concubine, and unlike a good many of the older and more conservative ladies of the ruling house of Zanzibar, she was not only deeply curious about European women, but eager to meet them. Salmé had been shy but friendly, and it was through her t
hat Cressy had met others of the royal ladies, and in company with Madame Tissot and Mrs Credwell, had ended by becoming an enthusiastic supporter of the present Sultan’s younger brother and Heir-Apparent, Seyyid Bargash-bin-Saïd.
“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.”