Trade Wind (71 page)

“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?”

“I didn’t—” began Clay automatically. “I…” He sat down suddenly on the bed beside her and put his head in his hands.

He was silent for a long time, and Hero looked at his slumped shoulders and bent head and knew that she had never loved him. That mysterious instinct possessed by all Eve’s daughters and which men refer to—often derisively—as ‘woman’s intuition,’ told her that had she truly done so, the fact that he had lied to her, and was not at all the sort of person she had imagined him to be, would not have been able to destroy that. It could only have caused pain and bitter disappointment, but nothing worse, for she did not believe that you could stop loving someone because they hurt or disappointed you—however much you might wish to do so. It could not be as easy as that Your head might reject them, but surely your heart would not?

Clayton said in a muffled and uneven voice: “I suppose it’s because I like women and I can’t leave them alone. Mother doesn’t understand that. She must have had a hell of a life with my father; he liked them too, and maybe I get it from him. Nat—my stepfather—doesn’t understand it either, and I couldn’t let them know. I had my own place, back home, so it was easy there. But here I had to live in the same house. So I rented those rooms in town. Somewhere where I could do what I liked…be myself.”

“Weren’t you afraid of being found out?”

“Oh, I knew there might be talk, but I thought I could deal with that. I got Joe to do the actual renting for me. It’s in his name, and I knew he wouldn’t give me away. Thérèse used to meet me there. We—we had an affair. It wasn’t altogether her fault; I began it. Old man Tissot’s twice her age and more like her grandfather than her husband, and she—well I guess she fell in love with me…”

Hero said: “Why did you want to marry me, Clay?”

“It seemed a good idea. Ma and Nat both wanted me to marry a nice, steady girl with plenty of money, who would sober me up and settle me down. You, in fact! Oh, I liked you all right. I liked you a lot, though you scared me plenty at times and I used to wonder if I could go through with it and how long I should be able to keep it up—acting noble and high-minded and prosing away like a moralizing missionary! I knew you’d find me out sooner or later, but I thought I might be able to bring you round. One of my uncles told me that Ma was every bit as high-minded when she married my father, but in spite of everything she’d always loved him and had never really gotten over him. And then I—I fancied I knew a hell of a lot about women, so I thought it might work out. That I could bring you down to earth a bit. Teach you to like the things I liked. Making love—parties—having a high time. Spending money on fun instead of using it to convert the heathen or put a stop to drinking or gambling and all the rest of it.”

“Is that why you speculated in slaves and guns? To have money for…for fun?”

“No. Just to have money. You’ve always had it, so you don’t know what it means to be without it. Or not to have enough. It was so damned easy to make it in a place like this, and I’d have been a fool if I’d turned down the chance.”

“But Clay—
slaves!
How could you? If it had been anything else…”

“The few slaves I bought and sold didn’t make a mite of difference to the wholesale traffic that’s being carried on m this part of the world! If I hadn’t sold them someone else would have done it. And I didn’t make them slaves; they were slaves already—caught and numbered and landed here. There was nothing that could be done about that.”

“And I suppose there was nothing that could be done about the firearms either?”

“That was different. That was just a plain matter of business, and one can’t afford to be sentimental over such things. The politics of these people are no concern of mine.”

“But they concerned Uncle Nat. If he had known—”

“If he’d known he’d have thrown me on to the next ship bound for home. And that might have been no bad thing, either! He’s your kind, Hero: and I suppose that old stick Edwards’ kind too. They probably couldn’t do a crooked thing if they tried. Wouldn’t know how. But they’ll neither of them ever get anywhere, and I shall—unless I end up in jail, or with some hysterical woman’s bullet through my head, like my father!”

He laughed, but with a harsh note of bitterness, and Hero said: “And Zorah?”

Clayton looked up, his face drawn and bewildered: “I thought she was just a—just another prostitute, and no different from the rest except that she was prettier than most of them. I didn’t think she’d care a damn as long as she got her money, and I never dreamt she’d…I never thought…How could I have known? Hero, I swear I didn’t mean any harm there. Not real harm; not to her. I thought it would rile Frost if she spent a few days with me for a change, but that was all. He’s always gotten my goat…

carrying on as though there was nothing wrong in slaving and smuggling and wenching just as long as you spoke out about it and didn’t give a damn who knew, but that there was something sneaky and low-down and rotten about doing it on the quiet. That isn’t true! Boasting about it doesn’t make it a mite better. And keeping quiet about it doesn’t make it any worse.”

“Or excuse it,” said Hero.

“I’m not excusing it. I’m just telling you how I came to do it, and why. I’m not proud of it, God knows, and if I could have kept you from finding out I would. But Zorah…that was your fault too. You and your ‘touch-me-not’ attitudes! You may not be my type, but you’re a damned good-looker all the same, and I’m not a dried up stick or a block of ice. You don’t know what it’s been like…not being allowed to kiss you or lay a finger on you for fear of scaring you into running for cover and breaking the whole thing off…I tell you it’s been hell! Holding myself in; playing prunes and prisms and all the while wanting to throw you down and show you what it’s all about. Sometimes I used to sneak out at night, after a chaste evening with you and one kiss on your shrinking cheek, and get me a woman from the Lai Bazaar. If I hadn’t, I’d have gone crazy. And if it hadn’t been for the state you got me in I daresay I wouldn’t have made a fool of myself over Zorah!”

Hero said in a whisper: “Oh no. Clay! Oh no…’ as though she were pleading with him, or with herself.

But Clay was not listening to her. He said: “As for all the rest of it, the money was there for the making, and if I hadn’t made it myself, someone else would. You can be as sentimental and self-righteous as you like about it, but I’ve done a sight less harm and caused a lot less misery by dealing in captured negroes than men like Dan Larrimore, who spend years of their lives trying to free them. There have been literally thousands of wretched blacks flung into the sea to drown, or landed and left to die of thirst and starvation, by captains of slave ships who were being chased by the British and didn’t dare risk being caught red-handed with slaves on board. But all I’ve done is to buy them at one price from a rascally trader, and sell them for a higher one to rich men who will provide them with food and clothes and their keep for life—and who’ll treat ‘em a sight better than many a white servant-girl gets treated back home in Boston, at that! It’s all in the way you look at it.”

He rose and stretched himself, straightening his shoulders as though he shrugged off a burden, and said: “Well, now I guess you know all about me, and maybe its better that way. Maybe it’ll give us a better chance of making a go of marriage.”

Hero said quietly: “But I’m not going to marry you, Clay.”

“You haven’t any choice, dear. And since what happened to you was mostly my fault, I haven’t either. If we get married at once, and you should have a child, it will be thought to be mine even if it’s not. That’s the very least I can do for you. And it’s the least you can do for—Well, for all of us. You do see that, don’t you?”

Hero was silent for so long that he thought that she had not understood him, and he said more urgently: “We just can’t afford to have a scandal. It would involve not only ourselves but my stepfather, and Mama and Cressy too. And then there are the Craynes to be thought of, as well as your own father’s family. Hollis Hill still stands for something, and you can’t go back there to have a nameless child, or even to bear one that we must pretend is prematurely born. You can’t think only of yourself I can promise you though, that I shall do everything in my power to protect you and make it up to you.”

Hero stood up slowly and went to stand by the window, holding aside the curtain and looking out at the darkened garden and the lights of the city. She said without turning: “I guess not…I—I will think about it.”

“Don’t think about it too long. And try not to blame me too much.”

“I’m not blaming you. I know that I am the one to blame. For being blind and self-opinionated and so sure that I must always be right about everything. For not realizing that people do things, or don’t do them, because there is something in them that pushes them that way and that they are not always strong enough to fight against…something that perhaps they cannot help; heredity, or the wrong sort of teaching. Or strong appetites that need to be satisfied, and which I—I never really understood anything about…before. You couldn’t resist women or the chance of making easy money, and I couldn’t resist interfering and helping to cause a great deal of harm because I was so sure that I was right, and—and I suppose because I enjoyed feeling that I was so much better and more public-spirited and intolerant of injustice than other people. Cousin Josiah was right and we ought to start with ourselves. I thought that was selfish once, but he said it was sense, and I guess it is.”

Clayton looked relieved, if not entirely sure what she was talking about, and he went over to her with the intention of putting an arm about her and assuring her of his continued affection. But when she turned her head and looked at him there was something in her face that made him think better of it, and he contented himself with saying that he appreciated her generosity and would be grateful if she would add to it by saying nothing of all this to his stepfather.

“Mama would forgive me,” said Clay, “but Nat wouldn’t, and I’d rather he kept his illusions—he and Aunt Lucy and the rest of them. It’s kind of queer, when you come to think of it, that your father should have been the only one I couldn’t fool. He told me he believed in ‘Live and Let Live,’ and that if you’d fallen in love with an out-and-out no-good with your eyes open, he wouldn’t have raised too much dust, because it might have worked out. But he reckoned that if you took on someone you thought was as high-minded and strait-laced as yourself, and then found that you’d been tricked into marrying a rascal, it would just about destroy you, and he wasn’t going to stand for you being sold a fake. Maybe I should have listened to him. But then you won’t be buying a fake now. You know what I’m like and you won’t expect me to behave like a plaster saint. It’ll work out, dear. I know it.”

Hero did not say anything, and he lifted her hand and kissed it lightly, and went away, looking considerably less hag-ridden than he had been at any time since he had heard of Zorah’s death. He was sorry about that And about what had happened to Hero. But he could not help thinking that it had not ended as disastrously as it might have done. Or at least, not as far as he himself was concerned.

31

Mr Potter, unrecognizable in the garb of a Banyan shopkeeper, was admitted to a quiet room in the Sultan’s Palace where he found Captain Emory Frost sleeping the sleep that should by rights belong only to the just, and awakened him without compunction.

“You seems to be doin’ all right,” remarked Batty, gazing sourly about him. “Comfortable little place you ‘ave ‘ere.”

“Very, thank you. Was that all you woke me up to tell me?”