Trade Wind (85 page)

“Yes,” said Dan, speaking for the first time.

He did not add anything to that brief affirmative, and Hero said: “Oh, and there is another thing: I shall need some clothes and my nightwear. Please tell Aunt Abby, ‘not too much and nothing frilly.’ And perhaps you would be so kind as to send one of your men with them, because I would rather Uncle Nat’s people did not come here; and certainly not Aunt Abby or Cressy though I know they will wish to. We cannot risk either of them contracting the fever, and with the streets in such a deplorable state, and cholera in the city, they are safer at home.”

“Yes,” said Dan again, slowly. He looked at Hero with a new respect and was silent because all the things he had meant to say seemed trivial and unnecessary.

A weak, fretful whimper made her turn swiftly and leave him, and a moment later he heard her speaking lovingly and reassuringly in the shadowed room: “I’m here, honey. It’s all right; I’m here.”

“You make ‘im…
please
make ‘im!” sobbed a small voice, so weak from fever that it was barely audible: “You can, can’t you? ‘Cos you k’n do anyfing…”

“Make who do what, sugar?”

“God. Make ‘im let Mama come back…jus’ for a little. Tell ‘im I only want to see her. You k’n tell ‘im…”

“I can ask Him, honey. I promise I’ll ask Him—we’ll both ask Him. Now be a good girl and don’t cry any more. Try to go to sleep, Am?”

“I will if you sing me. Sing me ‘bout Ejerlan…”

Dan, listening, heard Hero’s warm contralto, low-pitched and soothing, singing the song of a captive people to the little daughter of a slave trader and the slave whom he had bought for a few shillings and a bolt of cheap cloth—“‘
Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt’s land, and tell ole Pharaoh, to let my people go
…’”

Dr Kealey, joining the Lieutenant in the verandah a few minutes later, looked an enquiry and was answered by a shake of the head and a brief negative gesture that needed no interpretation.

“I agree,” said Dr Kealey, relieved. And added uneasily: “The Hollises are not going to like it. They will certainly object.”

“Yes,” agreed Dan; but not as though it mattered.

“There is of course always the risk that she may take the infection, “persisted the doctor, arguing with himself rather than Dan as they walked together towards the stone staircase and the courtyard: “But apart from that I cannot believe that she will come to any harm here; and she may do much good, for that child is seriously ill, and left to those serving women would not stand a chance. They have no understanding of the value of cleanliness and quiet in such cases, and most of then—remedies are worse than useless. Far worse! But Miss Hollis has a great deal of sense, and can be trusted to carry out instructions. And after all, she is of age and her own mistress.”

“Yes,” concurred Dan; aware that some answer was expected of him, and continuing to confine himself to that useful monosyllable. He collected his men from the courtyard with a curt jerk of the head, and walked back through the hot, crowded streets to face a difficult half-hour with his prospective father-in-law.

It had not been a pleasant interview and he was relieved when it was over. But there had, of course been nothing anyone could do about Hero, since as Dr Kealey had already pointed out, she was of age and her own mistress; and her aunt, though deeply concerned on her behalf, was even more concerned on Cressida’s. That ominous word “typhoid’, had been enough to send Abigail into a maternal panic, and she had immediately sided with Dan and agreed that it would be better if Hero kept away from the Consulate while there was any danger of her bringing the infection with her.

As for Clayton, there were several good reasons why he would have preferred to keep well clear of The Dolphins’ House, but when Dan’s mission proved abortive, he had gone there himself, and succeeded in gaining an interview with his betrothed. But it had proved as unsatisfactory, and quite as distasteful, as the one Dan had endured at the Consulate.

Hero had only been able to spare him a few minutes, for the child was awake and racked with fever, and though she listened to him patiently enough there was an abstracted look in her eyes and a faint frown between her brows, and he was resentfully aware that she was giving him only half her attention. His voice began to rise, and she lifted a hand quickly, hushing him:

“Please, Clay. Don’t be angry! I know how you feel and that you are only anxious on my account. But this is something I have to do.”

“Why? it’s nothing whatever to do with you. Why in thunder can’t you think of me for a change?—of my feelings instead of always your own? Or if mine are of no importance to you, you might try thinking of all the anxiety you are causing Ma and Cressy and your uncle.”

“I have thought of it,” said Hero, distressed. “And I am very sorry that they are worried, but there is no need for them to be, because—”

“Because it doesn’t mean a blamed thing to you compared with getting your own way and interfering in matters that are no concern of yours, does it?” interrupted Clay furiously.

“That is not true. And it does concern me: and you too, Clay.”

“
Me?
Just what do you mean by that?”

“You know. Or you should know.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, unless you’re going to tell me that after all that has happened, you still reckon we owe that goddamned slaver something for pulling you out of the sea—”

“I wasn’t thinking of him. I was thinking of Zorah.”

She saw Clayton’s flushed face pale and his eyes turn aside from hers, and said unhappily: “You see, Clay, if she had been alive she might have prevented this. Or if she could not, she would at least have noticed it earlier and been here to nurse the child. And—and you told me that it was partly my fault that you did…what you did. That I helped drive you to it I don’t know if that’s true or not, but you must see that I—that we…Clay, we
cannot
let her child die! Not without trying to do all we can to prevent it. We owe her that much.”

Clayton’s wandering gaze returned to her face and his grey eyes were hard. He said harshly: “Yes, I guess I see all right! This is your way of getting back at me. Not a generous, warmhearted gesture at all, but a carefully-thought-out punishment. Real smart of you, my dear, and I guess I deserve it But don’t you think you might have thought up some way of paying me out that didn’t involve my mother and sister in so much distress, or put my stepfather to so much embarrassment? It seems a mite unfair that they should have to suffer for my misdeeds. But maybe our collective misery will serve to even your score with me.”

Hero said helplessly: “It is not that at all. I’m only trying to—to atone a little for something that…Oh, what’s the use of talking if you do not wish to understand? And it is not only that; I have become fond of the child for her own sake, too.”

“One of Frost’s bastards!” said Clayton, spitting the words out as though they were acid in his mouth.

Hero’s face was suddenly rigid, but she did not raise her voice and it remained low-pitched and even: “You forget,” she said quietly, “that I may bear one of them myself.”

She turned from him with a faint rustle of poplin, and when he would have followed her he found his way barred by Batty Potter, who stepped out of the shadows of the sickroom and stood wiry and immobile in the doorway, his eyes cold chips of granite and the set of his whiskered jaw very sobering to hot blood. Batty might be getting old, but he had learned his fighting in a hard school where there were no such things as Queensberry Rules; and he too had not forgotten Zorah.

They looked at each other for a long, measuring minute, and then Batty sighed and said softly; “I wouldn’t—not if I was you, Mister Mayo.”

He shook his grizzled head regretfully, realizing that this was neither the time nor the place for loud words and blows, and that much as he would have liked to try his hand at rearranging Mr Mayo’s handsome features, there was nothing for it but to see that the unwelcome visitor left quickly—and quietly.

“Ain’t no sense in getting your dander up when you’re one agin a dozen,” remarked Batty reasonably, “for that ain’t nowise good odds, and you don’t want to go gettin’ yourself ‘eaved out of the ‘ouse by a lot of low deck’ands, now do you?” So just you go ‘ome quiet-like and tell your folks that they’ve no call to go worritin’ themselves over Miss ‘Ero, for no one ain’t going to lay a finger on ‘er. Jumah ‘ere’ll show you out.”

Clayton had known the risk he had run when he had come to The Dolphins’ House, and he had come armed. But he also had the sense to know when he was beaten. The old man was right, and there was nothing to be gained by a show of force except the humiliation of being ejected by a handful of grinning Africans—unless he used his revolver, which would only result in the death of several people, including himself.

His left hand ceased to be a fist, and die right, which had moved towards the holster concealed under his coat, fell to his side. Turning on his heel he left without further words, ignoring Jumah who hurried ahead of him to see that the door was opened and waited to make sure that it was barred behind him. He had not attempted a second visit, and later that day his mother had packed a valise which had been delivered to Hero by an able seaman from the
Daffodil
.

Nathaniel Hollis had made no further move to bring his niece to her senses, and had flatly refused Cressy’s plea that she might call and see how Hero went on. He too had become alarmed by the thought of typhoid, and so afraid for the safety of his daughter that he was almost tempted to ask Dr Kealey not to call at the Consulate with news of Hero, for fear that he might carry the contagion with him.

But it was not long before the threat of typhoid, terrible as it had once seemed, faded into insignificance against the towering menace of the cholera, and Dr Kealey no longer had time to call on Mr Consul Hollis; and little enough to spare for Amrah, struggling feebly for life in an upper room of the house of the Dolphins. The life of one small child shrank in importance when hundreds were dying daily in the crowded hovels of the Black Town, the stifling streets, the bazaars and the tall Arab houses of Zanzibar city, and in villages among the coconut groves and the clove plantations.

It was too late now for Nathaniel Hollis to regret that he had not moved his family to a house in the country, for by this time there were none available. All he could do was confine his wife and daughter to the Consulate and pray for a ship: an American ship. Or a European one bound for some safe port that would take Abigail and Cressy out of this pest-house of an island.

But no ship came, and those dhows that had been in harbour when the cholera struck hastened to leave it, and spread the news up and down the coast that to put in to Zanzibar was to court death, so that the harbour was emptier than it had been since the coming of Seyyid Saïd the first Sultan, and save for Majid’s few ships and a handful of fishing boats, only the
Daffodil
and the
Virago
remained at anchor…

“Surely, Colonel, there can no longer be any necessity to keep Larrimore and his men here for our protection?” argued Mr Hubert Platt, whose wife Jane was in a fever of anxiety on account of the twins, and had been pestering him night and day to arrange for their transport out of the Island: “Would it not be possible to send some of the families away on the
Daffodil
?”

But the British Consul was still reluctant to rid himself of the only deterrent the city possessed against the return of the pirates, and he hesitated to turn the
Daffodil
into a passenger ship when she might still be needed for sterner duties. Besides, for all they knew the epidemic might bum itself out sooner than they supposed, and without affecting the better built and more open portions of the Stone Town where the white community lived. Or the
Cormorant
might arrive earlier than expected; or possibly another ship?

But the death rate leapt, and the
Cormorant
, coming on the track of a slaver, altered course and sailed southward on a long chase that was to postpone her arrival by several weeks. And two serving-women at Beit-el-Tani, a native clerk from the French Consulate, and one of Clayton Mayo’s grooms, died of the cholera. Their deaths were only four among two hundred and thirty-seven deaths in Zanzibar that day, but they proved that even the privileged dwellers in the Stone Town were not immune, and Dan, calling on his betrothed the following evening, found her mother in tears and die Consul looking haggard and grim. A young relative of Clayton’s late groom, who had been serving as a dish-washer in the Consulate kitchen, had died that very afternoon and in the servants’ quarters attached to the house…

“They say he had been to his uncle’s funeral,” wept Abby, twisting her wet handkerchief until the fabric tore: “And though he did not feel well this morning, he got up as usual and helped in the kitchen until Cook says he just fell down on the floor and and they had to carry him out to the quarters and I didn’t know it could be so quick. It was only hours! He was alive this afternoon, and now…And it happened right here in the house. In our own kitchen! They didn’t even tell us until an hour ago, and we’ve all been eating our meals off plates and cups that he must have touched, and…”

“Now, Abby,” interposed her husband soothingly, patting her plump shoulders with a hand that was almost as unsteady as her own.

The news had shaken Dan quite as badly as it had shaken Cressy’s parents, and for the same reason. What was the good of confining her to the house and the garden when the cholera was already here, inside their own walls? He looked at Nathaniel Hollis, and for the first time the two men, father and suitor, not only understood each other but were in complete agreement. And it was at that moment that Nathaniel Hollis’s liking for the younger man began; born of the conviction that here was someone who cared just as deeply for Cressy as he himself did, and could be trusted to take good care of her.

“How soon can they be ready, sir?” asked Dan as though everything had already been discussed and agreed upon—as indeed it had.