When he met Mrs. Adair he found both. Polly Adair, as every one who dared to do so preferred to call her, was, like himself, an American and, though absurdly young, a widow. In the States she would have been called an extremely pretty girl. In a community where the few dozen white women had wilted and faded in the fierce sun of the equator, and where the rest of the women were jet black except their teeth, which were dyed an alluring purple, Polly Adair was as beautiful as a June morning. At least, so Hemingway thought the first time he saw her, and each succeeding time he thought her more beautiful, more lovely, more to be loved.
He met her, three days after his arrival, at the residence of the British agent and consul-general, where Lady Firth was giving tea to the six nurses from the English hospital and to all the other respectable members of Zanzibar society.
"My husband's typist," said her ladyship as she helped Hemingway to tea, "is a copatriot of yours. She's such a nice gell; not a bit like an American. I don't know what I'd do in this awful place without her.
Promise me," she begged tragically, "you will not ask her to marry you."Unconscious of his fate, Hemingway promised.
"Because all the men do," sighed Lady Firth, "and I never know what morning one of the wretches won't carry her off to a home of her own. And then what would become of me? Men are so selfish!
If you must fall in love," suggested her ladyship, "promise me you will fall in love with"--she paused innocently and raised baby-blue eyes, in a baby-like stare--"with some one else."Again Hemingway promised. He bowed gallantly. "That will be quite easy," he said.
Her ladyship smiled, but Hemingway did not see the smile. He was looking past her at a girl from home, who came across the terrace carrying in her hand a stenographer's note-book.
Lady Firth followed the direction of his eyes and saw the look in them. She exclaimed with dismay:
"Already! Already he deserts me, even before the ink is dry on the paper."She drew the note-book from Mrs. Adair's fingers and dropped it under the tea-table.
"Letters must wait, my child," she declared.
"But Sir George--" protested the girl.
"Sir George must wait, too," continued his wife; "the Foreign Office must wait, the British Empire must wait until you have had your tea."The girl laughed helplessly. As though assured her fellow countryman would comprehend, she turned to him.
"They're so exactly like what you want them to be," she said--"Imean about their tea!"
Hemingway smiled back with such intimate understanding that Lady Firth glanced up inquiringly.
"Have you met Mrs. Adair already?" she asked.
"No," said Hemingway, "but I have been trying to meet her for thirty years."Perplexed, the Englishwoman frowned, and then, with delight at her own perspicuity, laughed aloud.
"I know," she cried, "in your country you are what they call a 'hustler'! Is that right?" She waved them away. "Take Mrs. Adair over there," she commanded, "and tell her all the news from home.
Tell her about the railroad accidents and 'washouts' and the latest thing in lynching."The young people stretched out in long wicker chairs in the shade of a tree covered with purple flowers. On a perch at one side of them an orang-outang in a steel belt was combing the whiskers of her infant daughter; at their feet what looked like two chow puppies, but which happened to be Lady Firth's pet lions, were chewing each other's toothless gums; and in the immediate foreground the hospital nurses were defying the sun at tennis while the Sultan's band played selections from a Gaiety success of many years in the past. With these surroundings it was difficult to talk of home. Nor on any later occasions, except through inadvertence, did they talk of home.
For the reasons already stated, it amused Hemingway to volunteer no confidences. On account of what that same evening Harris told him of Mrs. Adair, he asked none.
Harris himself was a young man in no way inclined to withhold confidences. He enjoyed giving out information. He enjoyed talking about himself, his duties, the other consuls, the Zanzibaris, and his native State of Iowa. So long as he was permitted to talk, the listener could select the subject. But, combined with his loquacity, Hemingway had found him kind-hearted, intelligent, observing, and the call of a common country had got them quickly together.
Hemingway was quite conscious that the girl he had seen but once had impressed him out of all proportion to what he knew of her.
She seemed too good to be true. And he tried to persuade himself that after eight months in the hinterland among hippos and zebras any reasonably attractive girl would have proved equally disturbing.
But he was not convinced. He did not wish to be convinced. He assured himself that had he met Mrs. Adair at home among hundreds of others he would have recognized her as a woman of exceptional character, as one especially charming. He wanted to justify this idea of her; he wanted to talk of Mrs. Adair to Harris, not to learn more concerning her, but just for the pleasure of speaking her name.
He was much upset at that, and the discovery that on meeting a woman for the first time he still could be so boyishly and ingenuously moved greatly pleased him. It was a most delightful secret. So he acted on the principle that when a man immensely admires a woman and wishes to conceal that fact from every one else he can best do so by declaring his admiration in the frankest and most open manner. After the tea-party, as Harris and himself sat in the consulate, he so expressed himself.
"What an extraordinary nice girl," he exclaimed, "is that Mrs. Adair!
I had a long talk with her. She is most charming. However did a woman like that come to be in a place like this?"Judging from his manner, it seemed to Hemingway that at the mention of Mrs. Adair's name he had found Harris mentally on guard, as though the consul had guessed the question would come and had prepared for it.
