Trade Wind (62 page)

It had been easy enough to feel brisk and energetic, and critical of the idleness and apathy of others, while the sun shone from a cloudless sky and the nights were clear and cool. But the hot damp days and breathless nights had left their mark on her, and now the laziness of the native population, together with its ability to think up excuses for delaying any task until tomorrow—or the next day or the next week—no longer appeared so reprehensible, because she found that she herself was becoming idle. Idle and more tolerant.

Even the custom of an afternoon siesta, which she had once considered a disgraceful waste of time, had become so much a habit that she sometimes wondered if she would ever be able to break herself of it: though on reflection it still seemed absurd to her that she should be able to sleep away three hours of daylight in addition to retiring early each night and, on die whole, sleeping soundly enough until six or seven o’clock on the following morning.

There were still just as many things that needed to be done: abuses and misuses of justice which no one cared to put right; abominations that should be stamped out, and matters of sanitation that the rains had not solved and barely alleviated. Slavery still flourished, and though Colonel Edwards protested repeatedly to the Sultan, men, women and children continued to be openly shipped to the island and sold in the Zanzibar Slave Market. “It’s been going on for two thousand years or so,” said Nathaniel Hollis, “and if it takes another twenty years, or fifty—or even a hundred—to stamp it out, it won’t be surprising. Custom is a mighty deep-rooted thing.”

“I suppose so,” said Hero desolately: and gave Fattûma more money to give to Bofabi the gardener for the purchase and freeing of slaves. “Tell him only the ones whom no one else will buy, Fattûma. To save them from being sent away in the dhows.”

“They will bless your name for your great goodness,” Fattûma assured her, pocketing the money and deciding that she could on this occasion safely retain half, since the sum was an even larger one than usual. What a fool the Bibi was! And what a pity that she would soon be marrying the Bwana Mayo and leaving Zanzibar…

The wedding was still a long way ahead; the date having been fixed for the end of May when the
Masika
, the ‘Long Rains,’ would be over and five months of cool sunny days and pleasant nights set in. Clayton would have preferred an earlier date, but Hero had been obdurate, for the heat and humidity that the northeast Trades had brought with them made her shrink from embarking on such a delicate and personal relationship as marriage at a time when the climate was trying enough to make normal living no easy matter.

Her aunt had unexpectedly supported this decision, though for a different reason. Nathaniel Hollis’s tour of office, already extended by a year, would be over by midsummer, and then they could all return to the States together and be home by September—long before there was any possibility of the voyage being complicated by the imminent arrival of a baby. “For one has to think of such things,” confided Aunt Abby to Millicent Kealey, the doctor’s wife, “and if Clay had won his point and they had decided on getting married at the New Year, there is no telling but that dear Hero might have made me a grandmother during the voyage. Whereas if they wait to be married until the end of May or the first week in June, there can be no danger of her being in anything more than a delicate situation.”

It was a point that had not even occurred to Hero. She had been conscious only of a desire to postpone the wedding day until it was possible to think more clearly, and to rid herself of this unnatural mental and physical inertia which she felt sure was the result of the damp heat and the long hours of idleness. At the moment she did not feel capable of deciding anything. Which was in itself surprising enough, since she had always prided herself on knowing her own mind.

She began to wonder if perhaps the climate of a country was something that should be taken into account when one judged its inhabitants, since it could not fail to have an effect upon them. As it was having, after so short a time, upon herself! And on Cressy too, who was visibly wilting: though Hero was not entirely sure that it was only the humidity that was responsible for her cousin’s pale cheeks and listless manner. But then most of the other European women looked equally wan, and even her own flawless complexion was beginning to suffer from the heat and the pouring rain and the enforced inactivity.

They seldom saw Thérèse these days, but Olivia continued to be a constant visitor, and it was she who brought them the news that the lonely little Princess Salmé had taken to meeting young Wilhelm Ruete after dark, and that they had fallen in love.

“Isn’t it romantic?” breathed Olivia rapturously. “We’ve all been so sorry for her, poor little thing, because of course none of the Royal Family will speak to her now, and even Cholé has quarrelled with her because she said that she thought after all that they had been wrong over Bargash and…But she has been going up to the roof of Beit-el-Tani every evening, and Mr Ruete has been going up to his, and they’ve been able to talk to each other because the roofs are so close. He’s been teaching her German, and now they are in love and he wants to marry her. Don’t you think it’s
wonderful
?”

“Oh, yes,” said Cressy, unaccountably shedding tears.

“Oh no!” said Hero, distressed, “for how can he possibly marry her? It would never be allowed. He must know that.”

“Well he does, of course, and so does she, and it’s making her dreadfully unhappy. They’ve managed to meet sometimes…in our house you know. But Hubert says it’s exceedingly dangerous and he doesn’t at all like them taking such a risk, because if it ever came out that they were seeing each other they’d probably both be…Well, I don’t suppose they’d be
killed
, but…”

“That’s just what I mean,” said Hero. “You ought not to encourage it, Olivia.”

“Oh, but I’m sure something can be done. Love will find a way,” declared Olivia, with a sentimental confidence that had not been misplaced, for a way was found a week later.

A British ship had put into harbour, and Salmé took advantage of a holy day to go down to the sea with her maids to make the ritual ablutions proper to the occasion. She was seized and carried on board by British seamen, together with a hysterical maid (‘
Lord how she screeched
!’ recalled an enthralled sailor, writing home), and a few minutes later the ship had sailed for Aden where Salmé was to meet and marry her lover, and to be baptized a Christian.

The city had not taken it quietly.

Anti-European feeling rose so high that it became dangerous for a white face to be seen on the streets, and a furious mob of Arabs milled about the German Consulate, shouting insults and demanding vengeance, while the alarmed Europeans kept prudently to their houses, locking their doors and keeping their shutters closed. But though the majority of the Sultan’s subjects considered that the behaviour of the Seyyida Salmé had brought a greater shame upon the Royal House than her support of Bargash, Majid himself had not been able to find it in his heart to condemn her.

“There must be a great deal of good in him after all,” reported Olivia: “Which is a thing I never suspected. I know that his advisers wanted him to punish her over the Bargash affair, and he wouldn’t, but Hubert says that this is really
far
worse from the Arabs’ point of view, and that they are all terribly shocked. But it seems Majid has actually helped Wilhelm to leave the island safely and sent him off to Aden to join her. And he is going to send her dowry and a lot of jewels and things to Germany—which of course he needn’t do—and Hubert says the whole family are
furious
!”

“Perhaps we were all wrong about him, after all,” whispered dressy, dabbing her eyes. “We must have been, if he can be so noble and forgiving.”

“Yes, indeed,” agreed Olivia warmly. “And I am
so
happy for poor little Salmé! It must seem like a fairy-tale to her…they are so much in love. And only think how wonderful it will be for her. Living in a comfortable modern European house in a rich and civilized country, after this—!”

She waved a disparaging hand in the general direction of the city, and Cressy and Aunt Abby nodded their agreement But it occurred to Hero that they might all be wrong, and she wondered if Germany would really seem so wonderful to the little Arabian Princess whose father had been Seyyid Saïd-bin-Sultan, the Lion of Oman?

Would the cold climate of the West, the grey, brick-and-stucco houses, the gas-lamps, greasy streets and drab Western clothing hold much allure for a girl who had been born and brought up in an Eastern palace, where the windows looked out across green and scented gardens to a wide sea full of coral islands and the white wings of ships? Somehow Hero did not think so, and for the first time it occurred to her that there were aspects of Western cities and Western civilization that might appear as ugly, crude and appalling to Eastern eyes as Zanzibar and some of its customs had appeared to her. She herself had been profoundly shocked by so many things in the Island. But what would Salmé think of the rows of mean streets that were an accepted part of every European or American city?—the sordid slums and overcrowded tenements, the cheap saloon bars, the brothels and the street beggars? Were the well-fed black slaves of the Zanzibar Arabs so much worse off than the wizened children of “free’ whites, who worked in factories and mines? And would Salmé think that a grimy, fog-filled and smoke-blackened market in some industrial town was so much to be preferred above the hot, teeming, colourful bazaars of her native Island?

It had never before seemed possible to Hero that there could be any comparison between life in the East and the West that was not greatly to the West’s advantage. But now she found herself thinking about it from the standpoint of a girl who had been born in Zanzibar and known no other country, and who would soon be exchanging her bright silks and exotic jewellery for sober dresses of heavy, dark-coloured woollen cloth, and landing at the teeming, industrial port of Hamburg, where the docks would be full of merchant ships and the sky heavy with smoke from factory chimneys, and where there would be poverty, drunkenness and crime as well as gas-lamps and opera-houses and the opulent mansions of the rich.

“Poor Salmé!” said Hero softly. “I hope she will not be too homesick, and that her husband will be good to her and make up to her for all that she has given up for him.”

“
Given up
? exclaimed Olivia in surprise. “I can’t see that she has given up anything. I think she’s done very well for herself running off with that nice young German, and I expect they’ll make a great fuss of her in Germany because she’s a Princess, and she’ll be wildly happy and only too glad to escape from this horrid, hot, tuppenny-ha’penny little island. I’m beginning to look forward to leaving it myself, though once I used to think that it was quite charming and romantic…except for the dirt of course. And the smell. But one cannot
trust
these people. All these riots and disturbances and everything. I confess I shall be thankful to leave.”

Aunt Abby said soothingly: “But it is all over now, and everything has calmed down.”

“Until the pirates come,” said Olivia with a grimace.

“Oh, dear heavens!” gasped Aunt Abby, her face paling and her plump shoulders quivering in alarm: “If I hadn’t clean forgotten about those varmints! Yes, I guess they’ll be here soon. But then maybe they won’t come this year. And in any case, they never harm us, do they? Though of course they behave
abominably
to the poor townspeople. But the first year we were here the Sultan gave them a substantial sum of money to go away again, and though I know a heap of people seemed to think that he should not have done so, I myself think it was mighty sensible of him.”

“Perhaps he’ll do it again,” said Olivia hopefully. “I used to think that it was very craven of him, but now…Well after all that fuss over Salmé—and before that, Bargash—and not being able to go out for two whole days because of anti-European feeling, one really begins to feel that if peace can be bought for money then it is what Hubert calls a ‘
good buy
.’ Or is that very poor-spirited of me?”

“Not at all, dear,” said Aunt Abby warmly.’ I am sure that any sensible woman would agree with you, and we must hope that His Highness will pay these nasty creatures to go away again. That is, if they come.”

But there was no ‘if’ about it, thought Hero with a faint shiver of disquiet The news that they were on their way must already have reached the Island, because only that morning she and Clayton, snatching the opportunity offered by a break in the rains to take an early ride, had passed anxious groups of people leaving the city: the children and the more valuable slaves, and in some cases the wives and concubines, of well-to-do merchants and rich Arabs of Zanzibar, on their way to safe hiding places in the interior where they would remain until the raiders left.

She had watched the panic-stricken exodus with a certain amount of scorn, for in spite of all that she had heard of the pirates and their ways, it still seemed to her quite preposterous that the Sultan and his subjects should tamely submit to this annual infliction as though it was some inevitable visitation of nature, like the heat or the monsoon rains, that no one could do anything to prevent This was, after all, the nineteenth century, and it was high time that such medieval institutions as piracy were put a stop to! All that was needed was a little firmness and resolution. But there had been no indication of either quality in the anxious, hurrying groups of people who were seeking safety in the interior of the island, and it was only too obvious that they had no intention of making a stand against the raiders.

Her aunt was saying:”…as for any further ill-feeling towards the consulates, Colonel Edwards assured me only yesterday that there was no longer any danger of anti-white demonstrations, and that we could all go about quite freely again. Why, Clay took dear Hero out riding only this morning, which he would never have done had there been the least likelihood of trouble. Mr Hollis always says that these people are really just like children; they get excited and worked up, and then it all blows over and they forget about it and are once more as good-tempered and cheerful as though nothing had happened. And he is right, of course. One sees it so clearly.”