Trade Wind Read Online Free

the fate of these unhappy women, it had seemed to Hero cruelly unfair that while she herself enjoyed the full benefits of freedom in a civilized and prosperous country, hapless millions in Eastern lands were doomed to live and die in unrelieved misery for lack of a little enlightenment—a crumb from the Rich Man’s table. There were even times when she could almost imagine that those anonymous, suffering millions were calling to her: the sequestered women in harems and seraglios, the slaves in the black holds of dhows and the disease-ridden poor…‘Come over into Macedonia and help us’…!
    “I must learn something about nursing,” decided Hero. And to the dismay of her father and the strongly expressed disapproval of her relations she had actually done so. Going three days a week to a local Charity Hospital whose staff had been only too glad to accept the services of an unpaid voluntary assistant, and whose head doctor had informed her disgruntled parent that his daughter was not only a born nurse, but a credit to her sex: “We get a heap of rough characters in our wards, Mr Hollis,” said the doctor,” but you ought to see the way their eyes light up when your girl comes in. She seems to be able to comfort them; and to give them confidence that they’ll get well, which is half the battle. They just about worship her. Even the worst of them!”
    But Barclay was not to be placated by such praise, and he continued to regard Hero’s visits to the hospital with a baffled mixture of disbelief and aversion.’ If I’d known what bees you were going to bring back in your bonnet, damned if I’d ever have let you go traipsing around in Carolina with those Langlys!” he observed sourly.
    He was not to know that the shorter stay in Washington was to have a far greater effect on his daughter’s future than all Clarissa Langly’s pamphlets. The reason being that the Crayne cousins in the capital had entertained lavishly for their guests, and since their friends were largely drawn from Government circles. Hero had been able to hold forth on her favourite topics (slavery and the sad state of that infamous centre of the trade, Zanzibar) to a wide variety of disconcerted Senators and Congressmen. So that when, a few months afterwards, hearing that her Uncle Nathaniel had been appointed American Consul in Zanzibar, his brother Barclay had declared it to be an odd coincidence and his niece had seen it as the finger of fate, neither had been right. For in point of fact a solid hour of Hero’s conversation during an evening party at Cousin Louella’s house, had caused the name of “Hollis’ to become so inextricably linked with Zanzibar in the mind of one influential guest, that the appointment had been more in the nature of a reflex action.
    Uncle Nathaniel had not been pleased, but he was too conscientious a man to contest the posting; and Hero Athena, sublimely unaware of being in any way responsible, had been torn between awe and envy. It was unbelievable! Zanzibar—her chosen island!…and Aunt Abby and Cousin Cressy would be going with him; and Clayton too. If only…If only…!
    But there had never been any question of her accompanying them. And in any case, relations between the two families had recently become strained, owing to Barclay having taken a sudden and violent dislike to his brother’s step-son, Clayton Mayo.
    Long ago, on the occasion of his daughter’s christening, Barclay had hotly defended his choice of names for die motherless infant: ‘Just you wait!’ he had retorted to the shocked chorus of disapproval: “She’ll have them swimming the Hellespont in droves one of these days. She’s going to be a beauty, is my girl. You’ll see!”
    Well, he had been right in the last of those predictions, because Hero had certainly grown up to be a beauty. But a beauty without an ounce of coquetry or feminine allure. “The best lookin’ gal in Boston,” as her cousin Hartley Crayne had been heard to