Presently he spoke again. "I hope," he said, "you will not be unkind to that young man."
"You mean—"
"Professor Dare," he said.
"But he is not a professor—he said he was not."
"They have taken his title away from him," said Mr. Ghafir, "and he is bitter. He is young and very bitter, suffering from a complaint common to all mankind who think."
"I do not understand."
"He believes he is misunderstood."
"Is that so terrible?"
"To a man who cannot make the world accept his thoughts as truth it is the most terrible thing there is."
"You say they have taken away his title."
"Because they regarded him as dangerous; an unsafe man to trust with the minds of youths. He was a professor, a full professor in a great university—and his age still under thirty. His difficulty was that he lived in a region of pure reason—and so they took away his honors and, to their way of thinking, disgraced him."
"He was an infidel?" she asked.
"It was not for that. Being infidel or agnostic is fashionable nowadays in intellectual circles. No, he went farther. I think it was his lecture establishing the thesis that moral right and wrong do not exist which did for him. That was going too far. You may attack God without suffering at the hands of men, but you may not attack property."
"I'm afraid I'm not able to understand. Was he one of these socialists, then? I don't understand about them."
"No. Socialism springs from human sympathy. There is nothing, nobody, in the world Dare is sorry for. His effort was to abolish heart and to exalt cold, selfish, ruthless intelligence . . . . Poor boy!"
Rhoda considered. She had been reared in quite another school, a school where head gave place to heart, where the highest virtue was blind loyalty to a friend, an equally blind willingness to give aid to a fellow-craftsman in trouble. "I do not think I could like him," she said.
"He is very unhappy. I can follow his thoughts. In his exasperation he has turned his back on the world he knew and has rushed off into a wilderness. That is it. He is lost in a wilderness, and he is not calm as a lost woodsman should be, waiting for the morning to disclose landmarks, but rushing about wildly, bruising himself in the darkness. . . "
He was, in this, thought Rhoda, not unlike herself. She, too, was lost in a wilderness, groping, plunging, running here and there feverishly seeking the true road.
"I am sorry for him," she said. And then, "When did you know my mother?"
"It was in Cairo," he said. "We talked. How well she talked, my child, and how little she knew about herself, wonderful woman that she was." That wistful, arresting smile again lighted his face. "She was dissatisfied, but she could not tell why . . . . It was the next year she changed her mode of life—and I wonder if she knew why she did that. I doubt it."
"She used to say she changed because she was tired of the other," Rhoda said.
"Tired! What a vast territory that word covers—and yet, who of all the millions upon this earth knows its meaning save myself!" As he spoke it seemed he had forgotten her, were looking inward upon himself, thinking of something it was impossible for other men to envision. "How much longer?—"
His voice died and his eyes closed as if in prayer. Then: "Tired! Yes, she was tired, but what made her tired? Not the adventure, not the danger, not the excitement of it. No, those things never would have tired Rhoda Fair. . . . She was tired of the evils of it, though I doubt if she ever knew it. It was the rightness of her that was tired of the wrongdoing. That was it . . . . But she was so self-sufficient! . . . A wonderful woman who would have been great had she discovered her soul."
"She was good," Rhoda said, springing to the defense.
"Good! Yes, because the foundations of her were good, because it is healthy to be good and she was healthy of mind and body. But not good in the highest sense of being good . . . And yet—and yet how dare I judge? . . . And you—are you good?"
"I don't know," Rhoda said, honestly.
"Then you are not bad," he said, with a whimsical smile. For a moment he peered into her face as if in pity. "The world is tugging at you," he said. "You are being pulled and hauled—is it not so? . . . What is it you want? What is it you are going to seek?"
"Again I don't know," she said.
"Then I can tell you. It is peace."
"Perhaps."
"But peace is not easily to be found. It is reached through experience, and experience is pain and grief and humiliation —and love. Pleasure you can buy, the markets are full of it. Happiness you can snatch and even hold for a day or a year. But peace—that is enduring and must be earned."
They moved forward and again stood against the rail, looking down upon the deck occupied by the third class. Rhoda was turning over in her mind what Mr. Ghafir had said about peace and the winning of it, and she knew he was right. It was peace,—the ease of mind, the comfort, the ceasing of the pain which can only come from a mind at peace—which she sought . . . Her eyes were turned downward at the returning Italian peasants and the few American voyagers who traveled with them through need for economy. Her hand reached out involuntarily and fastened upon Mr. Ghafir's arm; she leaned forward tensely, peering, scrutinizing. A man, tall, slender, was moving out of a circle of light; his back, his movements were familiar, yet his face was invisible.
"Is—is there a list of third-class passengers?" she asked, in a curious, fiat tone.
"You will have to apply to the purser."
"Let us go, then," she said, tugging at his coat. "I— Let us go at once."
"You thought you recognized someone?"
"Yes," she said but did not give the name. Then, to herself, "What is he doing here? Did he trace me, follow me?" For the back she had seen moving hastily out of the circle of light was the back of Jaunty Bailey . . . Why should he have sought the shadows if he had not seen her and desired to remain, himself, unseen?
Chapter Four
THE ci-devant professor, Paul Dare, was tramping the deck in the early morning with quick, nervous steps; he was young enough to hope his expression was morose, whereas it was nothing more or less than exceedingly unhappy. He had not recovered from the shock of his downfall; it was unbelievable. Such a thing could not have happened to him. He ached with it as with the approach of malaria . . . Almost without effort he had outstripped his fellow-strivers in the scholastic field, had won premature recognition and a name. Honors and degrees had been showered upon him, and his elders listened to his voice. So, perhaps, it was not other than natural he should have deemed himself above the herd and not amenable to its pain and penalties. Daring, he had been called, but he was not daring. It was that he worshiped his own intellect and believed that, because he was the possessor of it, he was immune. Wherefore he had gone further and further, striding where other men hesitated to step, uttering what other men, if they believed it, kept imprisoned in their own brains . . . And then the debacle! He, Paul Dare, had been ejected from his chair; his university had publicly disclaimed responsibility for his teachings; and no other seat of learning dared to take him into its fold. The blow was to his self-esteem, and his only solace was that his misfortunes had come to him because no other intellect in the world could comprehend or keep pace with his own.
Always he had despised people. Never had he made a friend, which, perhaps, was the real reason for his downfall. When the hour of stress came there was none to come to his defense. Perhaps he was the alonest man in the world, though he did not realize it. He was as ignorant of the social side of life as he was cognizant of the sociological side, or such part of it as may be learned from books, and he was as full of humanity and sympathy as one of these chess-playing automatons that one may see for a quarter. It was not conceit, exactly. It was something that went far beyond conceit. It was not vanity, and for that he must be given credit, for to be vain one must consider his fellow-men and value their opinion of him: Paul Dare cared nothing what anybody thought of him, a
nd saw himself as a cold, embodied intellect seated upon an eminence a little higher than any other eminence—a sort of Buddha living in a rarified atmosphere of pure reason . . . The intellect was there, one of the finest brains of the century, rendered sterile because he sought to detach it utterly from the physical. This world has no place to put to work a mind which has no comprehension of why a mother loves her child, a man hates his enemy, a lover is jealous of his rival, a king or a financier yearns for conquest, a laborer chafes at his servitude.
Now, as he tramped, he believed he was thinking one thing, while, in reality, he was feeling quite another. He was wading through the mud of humiliation; was experiencing an emotion, and, being a novice at it, was bewildered at its ramifications. He did know he wanted to be alone; he resented the group at his table; he had no wish to speak with any of them or with any other person on shipboard. What could they have to say which would interest his ear? . . . Then in the middle of things came that unpleasant question: What was he going to do? How was he going to live when his small savings and slight patrimony were expended? It was a question he never had been called upon to face before, for his life had unrolled before him like a map with roads marked in red. It had been a definite life, certain, without doubts or worries. That intellect of his was greatly desired by the world which would delight to give him food and shelter and raiment in return for the boon of exercising it . . . Now he discovered that intellect as intellect was not a marketable commodity; it was only the product of intellect which could be carried to the bazaars.
He did not know it, but he had, at long last, entered the kindergarten of life.
His eyes lifted from the planking of the deck to encounter the glance of Rhoda Fair, who approached from the opposite direction, and he stopped, addressing her abruptly and with no gracious overtures.
"Who," he demanded, "is that man—with the foreign name —Ghafir?"
"I don't know," said Rhoda, coldly.
"I fail to understand him," he said, petulantly.
"Do you understand anybody?" she countered for his manner displeased her.
Now there is one fine thing about a noble intellect, it sees and admits. Paul Dare took her question into his mind and turned it over. "No," he said, "You are right. I do not understand anybody. I have never wanted to. It is a waste of time."
"Then why complain of your failure to understand Mr. Ghafir?"
This puzzled him. He nodded. "It is inconsistent," he said, "but there is something about him—"
"There is something about everybody," said Rhoda, who had the keenest curiosity, an interest which extended to every individual with whom she came in contact.
"What?" he asked with thinly veiled contempt for her opinion.
She was not affronted and was rather surprised that this was so. On the contrary, she was amused. This young man with a face which, somehow, reminded her of a falcon, who seemed so dry-as-dust for all his youth and good looks, was a contradiction, a paradox. She laughed and was very lovely to look at.
"I've never bothered to wonder why people were interesting," she said; "I've always known they were. I think it is because you never know what they will do; because you compare them with yourself, you know, and wonder how they would act in certain circumstances. Really, that's awfully funny. You see a queer, dowdy couple walking along the street, and try to imagine them making love to each other. You can pick out anything for them and wonder how they go about doing it. . . . And you never, never can tell. You know how they look, but you don't know what's going on inside."
"Why bother?"
"Just for fun," she said, succinctly.
"Fun!"
"Don't you know about fun, either?" she asked, and then deliberately laughed at him, not disagreeably, but companion-ably, charmingly.
"You are laughing at me," he said. It was a statement, merely that. He was telling himself rather than Rhoda. Someone was laughing at him, and that had never happened before. Vaguely he had supposed it must be a very irritating thing to be derided and had been unable to conceive of its happening to him. But here it was happening, and it was unpleasant; it did something to him that he could not describe or define.
"What is fun?" he asked.
"Fun," she said, "is when happiness wags its tail."
Actually he was nonplused. "That doesn't mean anything. It makes no sense." But all the same, he had a vague idea that it did mean something; that this girl had said something not only clever, but acute. She was beginning to interest him as an intellect, which, he fancied, was the only way any individual could make an impression upon him.
"What is sense?" she countered.
It was beneath him to make a light reply, and, truth to tell, he had neither the training nor the practice to be facetious. His idea of humor was a bitter irony. "Sense," he said, "is the opposite of non-sense—signification. A thing has sense when it coheres; when the mind accepts it."
"I think I understand." Her eyes twinkled. "And I can make a better definition."
"Which is?"
"Sense," she said with a make-believe air of erudition, "is a saucer of skimmed milk."
"You infer that logic, correctness of thought and statement, are without flavor and nourishment . . . What, then, is nonsense?"
"Whipped cream with vanilla flavoring," she said, promptly.
He appraised her with his eyes, which was a dangerous thing for any man to do if he did not wish to have recollections; clearly he was endeavoring to classify and catalogue her. "Primitive peoples," he said, "express themselves in figures of speech, by circumlocution. This is because of paucity of vocabulary or inability to define logically. They do not tell you what a thing is, but what it is like."
"If," she asked, "you are not interested in people, why do you travel?"
He flushed. "Because it was made apparent to me that I was unwelcome at home," he said. And then, "Why do you travel? Is it usual for a young woman to travel alone? . . . I do not mind saying that, as a possible source of data upon the debated subject of heredity, you interest me. In fact, I have discussed you with Mr. Ghafir, and have made some notes." This was quite impersonal; he was oblivious to any sensibilities she might have and, apparently, quite unaware how his words might wound.
She bit her lip. "So you wish to study me, to pry into me?"
"Exactly," he said, with eagerness. "I understand that both your father and mother belonged to the so-called criminal class."
"So-called?"
"It is a name like anything else. We must have names for things, as you can see. It would be very enlightening to read your mind, to follow your thought processes, and to note your reactions."
"Then you believe in heredity?"
He smiled. "Physically—to a limited extent. Psychically—not at all." He became expository, a lecturer before his class. "Whatever is physical must be made in some mold, to a design. Otherwise classifications must fail. The offspring of an antelope cannot be a rodent. That is clear. But the mind, which is all that makes of man the dominant animal, is not subject to physical laws."
"So that—"
"It all becomes a matter of what is vulgarly called suggestion. Suggestion is nothing less than an imponderable form of instruction. Children may become mentally like their parents, not because mental characteristics descend to them, but because they are suggested. You, for instance, having rested from babyhood under the suggestion that your parents were criminals, might, in turn, become criminal yourself. Do you see?"
"A sort of hypnotism?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "If that makes it more easily comprehended, yes."
The spirit of mischief left her as suddenly and inexplicably as it had come; she was depressed; her burden was again upon her shoulders—a burden which, for the first time, she wished she might transfer to some safe other. She felt alone, insufficient —as it is right a woman in trouble should feel, for instinct, if it be not dead, must, in youth and perhaps in age, turn her toward some man. It was a new mental expe
rience, this urge to find haven and protection, and it startled her in spite of the fact that marriage had been pictured to her as every woman's ultimate, proper resting-place. She wished she were married, giving no thought to love, to some safe, kind man—to some man like Mr. Ghafir, who would treat her as a child and cherish her. It was not the conception of marriage one of her years and beauty should receive. . . . But, contrasting it with Jaunty Bailey's love-making in her dark bedroom, with officers of the law watching its windows, it seemed fine and precious and desirable . . . It was a father she yearned for, not a husband.
Then, becoming aware again of Paul Dare, she appraised him, as women will appraise a man—and found him wanting. Her thought was a complaint: He looks like a man, but he's not a man. This was the form into which her thoughts molded themselves. From top to toe he was equipped to play the part of a man; his falcon face spoke falsely of capacity for action, of powers of emotion which did not exist. She regarded him as something which did not live, a container for a heart which was itself a dust bin . . . Suddenly she wanted no more of him; his presence irritated her—as if, somehow, he was cheating her. So, abruptly, she turned away, interrupting a learned sentence.
"I want to walk," she said, and thus, guilty of a discourtesy, she left him nonplused, following her with startled eyes, which, strangely, smoldered with something very human and boyish and aggrieved. Perhaps this was an essential part of his education, but he did not recognize it as such.
Rhoda descended to the purser's office, where, the night before, she had failed to find the name of Bailey on any list of passengers. But she was not convinced. A night not wholly given to restful sleep had destroyed the negative comfort of finding that name absent from the records. Now, with kindled determination, she was on her way to make a request—to be conducted through the forward portion of the vessel and to make sure with her own eyes.
The ship's doctor sat in the little office, a merry young man, destined for popularity and profuse with what he imagined to be intelligible English. . . . He would be delighted. As a matter of fact, he was about to make a passage through the third class as a matter of duty and would be overjoyed to exhibit and to explain. So she accompanied him, pretending to listen to his nonsense, which was all the more nonsensical for the quaintness of the phrases in which it was spoken. He showed her how the third class slept, how and where they took their meals, and how they amused themselves. In this she pretended an interest while scrutinizing every face, looking into each shadowy doorway or corner. . . . If Jaunty Bailey were on board he was invisible—and so, returning to her own proper part of the vessel, she should have been reassured, but she was not. On the contrary. If the man were aboard and his desire was not to be seen, then he would not be seen. She knew him well enough for that. And she knew that if he were at pains to conceal himself there was a threat to herself. He knew she was there and wished to conceal from her his presence; she was the objective of his crossing the ocean.
RHODA FAIR: The Classic Novel of a Woman at the Crossroads Page 4
