"Go to Nazareth," he had said, and she was going to Nazareth, not knowing what she should find, but seeking in that remote, obscure village the battleground. There, undisturbed, uninfluenced—out of the elements of which she was made—she would reconstruct herself—or construct herself. In truth, it was no labor of reconstruction, for she was not. Somehow she felt there was no Rhoda Fair, but only the materials out of which Rhoda Fair might be builded. It seemed to her that she was no more Rhoda Fair than the heaps of brick and cement and lumber and iron which surround some site are the finished structure. So far she had traveled, and to such point of knowledge she had come. Nazareth was to be battleground building site—which of the two remained to be determined.
And she had made good her escape. Not one of the ship's company with whom she had crossed the Atlantic was aware of what she had done—not even Jaunty Bailey, who watched her with hawk's eye, predatory mind upon those jewels which he required for the furtherance of his dubious plans. That part of her which she recognized as her most dangerous inheritance from her mother had arisen to assist her—that fertility in devious planning, that daring combined with efficient coordination of detail; that mental equipment which had made Rhoda Fair the elder queen of world's confidence women. So, while those passengers who thought of her at all believed her to be sleeping in the Hotel Excelsior upon that Neapolitan thoroughfare which boasts the most gorgeous view of any street known to man, she was in reality in her cabin aboard the Esperia, outward bound for Alexandria. Instead of gazing from her window across the Bay of Naples at the distant, smoking cone of ever-threatening Vesuvius, at the towering hills over Sorrento way, or at Capri, dim and silvery through the mists, she stared through a porthole upon the tossing Mediterranean, where nothing was visible except a dim, drab line which was the fast disappearing coast of Italy.
She was thinking, not of Jaunty Bailey, not of pompous, erudition-parading Mr. Knapp or his subdued wife, not even of Paul Dare, but of Mr. Ghafir. The last words he had spoken to her were repeating themselves and she was peering at the truth they contained, contained, wondering if it were truth or sophistry.
"My child," he said, "one does not find what you seek except through intermediate stages. It is a journey. One may not arrive at the destination unless one stops at the villages along the way—and you have not arrived at the first village."
"What is its name?" she asked.
"For you its name is Decision, I think. You must want something, good or evil—a definite thing, a known objective. Today you are negative. Your life is like a horse which wanders along the highway, riderless, unhaltered, nibbling grass from among the stones. The only purpose that horse knows is not to be caught and returned to the stable. So it will browse until it is caught and its wandering will have been a profitless interlude. . . . No, we do not arrive at destinations by accident or casually. We must choose and then plan our journey and carry it through by labor and determination."
"But what object?"
"Who can say? Any positive desire. And you have none. Only the negative desire not to do, not to be fettered, not to make decisions. There must be a reason for living, good or evil, a reason for continuing, for pressing ahead or drawing back. . . . Before you can become what it is within your power to be you must have a clear desire, a point in the distance toward which you struggle."
"Do you mean ambition?"
"Ambition is the substitute, the makeshift—just as the flame of a candle is a substitute for the light of the sun. Ah—ambitions! Have I not seen them and the workings of them? Ambitions leap high in devouring flames—and are gone. The man Bonaparte, his the greatest ambition of them all. But what remains to testify? A page in a book, the names of certain streets. . . ."
"What then?" she asked, impressed, eager, feeling that she listened to words which came from such experience as no individual ever had at his disposal. It was a feeling for which she could not account, an emanation given off by this old gentleman.
"The thing," he said, "which our young friend possesses in some measure—cramped and distorted, it is true, but smoldering, ready to burst into flame if the fanning wind shall come. His object is a passion for truth. His desire is to know and to tell. . . . There have been great objectives in the world free from ambition, pure, lofty. It is something akin to these that I hope may come to you. . . . The Hindu Gautama, the Greek Socrates, the Man of Nazareth—and after Him that glowing soul Mani, Paul,—oh, many of them who have left behind more than a page of print and their names at a street corner. . . . For good or for ill you must want to be and want to do. . . . When you have found that thing we shall see."
Now she pondered this matter, for it was not clear to her; it was a deeper philosophy than she could penetrate. Did Mr. Ghafir demand of her that she become a philosopher, a teacher, the founder of a new religion or the voice of an old? She did not understand, nor was understanding to come to her for many days and after many happenings. Yet again and again the words returned to her and troubled her. . . . She was negative, not positive. Her life was a constant saying of "I will not" and never of "I will." This much she comprehended dimly, but the necessities demanded the saying of "I will not." To refuse, to deny, was her only defense; in it lay her safety. If she refused everything, let nothing seize upon her, no harm would come to her; if she admitted one thing, accepted one thing, resolved "I will" to one demand, then who could say? . . . So she continued to escape physically and in the higher realms of the mind, a fugitive soul in a fugitive body. . . .
Her dinner and breakfast she had taken in her cabin; now well toward the middle of the Mediterranean, Syracuse left behind, she felt it safe to emerge and to mingle with the other passengers on that most luxurious of small craft, speediest of all passenger carriers between Italy and Egypt. She had glanced only cursorily at the little ship when she came aboard; now, with greater leisure at her disposal, she was astonished at the magnificence of it, realizing now why it had cost her almost as much for her two days' passage as it had for the twelve days' crossing of the Atlantic. And the passengers themselves! There was an air about them as a whole; many were personages, as one could tell with half an eye. Here was no heterogeneous company, and the certainty of it gave her a feeling of security.
At luncheon she found herself placed at a round table in the main dining-room, not in the mezzanine, confronted by six strangers, but such strangers as put her at once at her ease by the graciousness of their reception. Two of them were elderly men, one robust, white of hair, ruddy of cheek, handsome in an admirable, Nordic way. She was presently to discover that he was an admiral in his own land of Sweden, a distinguished man of charming manners who spoke with equal facility his own language, French, and English. Beside him sat his wife, a plain woman to look at, with rather prominent teeth, but such bright, interested eyes, and so alertly charming manner and conversation that one gave no second thought to her appearance. In their company were a son and daughter, true children of Scandinavia, healthy, shyly friendly. . . . At Rhoda's right hand sat the other elderly man, a small personage with fringe of beard and longish, thin, white hair. He was bald except for a space above the ears, and, somehow, as he perked his head to glance at her, he reminded her of some hoary, experienced, humorous sparrow. The likeness was heightened by the sweep of his beak, for it was a true beak. Shaggy eyebrows sought to conceal the blue of his eyes. He was a Jew. There was no mistaking his race, for in his eyes, the droop of his lids, one might read the sorrows of Israel; in his eagle beak the glories of Judah. With him was his wife, sloe-eyed, capable, garrulous, ever solicitous of his welfare and willing to discuss his aches and pains. In a matter of minutes it became apparent that he was her business in life, that every thought was his; that she strove to be to him what Rebecca was to Jacob.
Rhoda recognized the Jew at once, for his was a familiar face to newspaper-reading America. Most distinguished of his race upon the American continent was Reuben Friend, many times millionaire, scholar, author of books upon the deve
lopment of nations—but first of all philanthropist, lover of his fellow-men, and forefront of that movement which hopes to make of Palestine a new promised land, a refuge for the oppressed Hebrew of all lands. . . . He seemed so bent, so frail to have done so much, to be so much, to contain the energy for so much planning and achieving as lay before him. . . .
They welcomed her, each in his own way, by a gesture admitted her to their fellowship, and took up the thread of their conversation.
"But," said the Swede, "will your Jews who have found safety and prosperity in England and America and Germany and France abandon those things to return to Palestine? Do they look with favor upon the movement?"
"They do not," said Mrs. Friend, seizing the conversation from her husband's very lips. "It is ridiculous. I am of the Jews. I have seen Palestine many times, but nothing in the world could make me go there. . . ."
"Now. . . . Now. . . ." Reuben's voice was gentle, expostulatory. He turned to the Swede, "You have not caught the idea," he said. "It is not that. We do not hope, nor do we desire, that the Jews of the world shall migrate to the land of their fathers. . . . Not all—only the weary and the oppressed, those whose backs are bowed and whose heads are sunk under oppression. To them we offer a refuge, a place of safety and of hope."
"But will they find it there? Will they be welcomed by the population?"
"A new day has dawned. The Turk is gone forever with his corruption and his cruelty. . . . Though many untruths have been spoken against the Turk. The English sit in the seat of David, and they are just. They will see that all are treated according to their deserts, whether it be Jew, Mohammedan, Latin Church, Armenian, or whichever of the warring sects whose conduct disgraces the Holy City. . . . And in time—give us but time."
"Does the movement progress?"
"Slowly, but the colonies grow. Perhaps ten thousand this year, hopes of twenty thousand next. . . . And so, in twenty years an equality of numbers with the Arabs. . . "
"Let us talk of something else," said Mrs. Friend, briskly. "My husband"—a thousand times in a day she said "My husband," and each time with a manner and a pride, yet discussing him in his presence as though he were a child—"my husband will run on. He talks and talks about this thing until people want to run away. . . . My dear, you must not bore people with your enthusiasms."
Reuben Friend blinked at her, not in exasperation, but tolerantly, "And yet," he said, "I see few fleeing as I approach."
"And you, my dear," said Mrs. Friend to Rhoda, "do you go to Egypt? Doubtless to see the newly opened tomb."
"I am going to Nazareth," said Rhoda.
Reuben turned to face her, a sharp, distinct movement of sudden interest. "To Nazareth! And why to Nazareth?"
"I— It was recommended to me. . . ." She could not tell these strangers why she was going, yet the ridiculous inadequacy of her answer, its absurdity, made her smile. She spoke of Nazareth as she might have spoken of some clean pension where the food was good.
"Ah, recommended to you? Ah, yes. Indeed." Reuben was puzzled. "And may I ask by whom?"
"A Mr. Ghafir, with whom I crossed the ocean."
Reuben Friend turned in his chair so abruptly that he set the glasses on the table to tilting, and stared at her; there was something in his scrutiny other than mere surprise—a deep, moving interest! "Mr. Ghafir crossing the Atlantic! . . . Recently! . . . And he is your friend?"
"Acquaintance, rather."
"I am an old man and given to impertinent questions. Why did he send you to Nazareth?"
"Because—" she hesitated. Then, "to rest and to—think."
"And he sent you," Reuben murmured, staring at his plate. "He sent you to Nazareth. . . . Then there was need. He does not act without an object, nor advise without reason. . . . Young woman, go to Nazareth as he directed—without fail."
"Mr. Ghafir," said Mrs. Friend, "is such a cultured man, so traveled. He knows as many prominent men the world over as my husband."
Reuben smiled abstractedly. So accustomed was he to his wife's little vanities that he was all but unconscious of them. "I, too, shall visit Nazareth," he said. "I, too. . . . For was He not a Jew and one of the greatest? As I shall visit and put a pebble upon the tomb of the great Maimonides in Tiberias. . . . Ah, what a history is ours! What men we have produced! What a race! . . . I did not catch your name, my child."
"Fair," she said, crisply, apprehensive of its reception. "Rhoda Fair." She pronounced it fully, with bravado.
"Rhoda Fair. . . . Rhoda Fair. . . . It is familiar to me, yet—"
"My mother," said Rhoda, "has left me—very recently. The papers. . . "
"Of course! Of course. . . . It was she who gave such generous support to the Children's Hospital in Detroit. Indeed I know the name."
A wave of gratitude, of astonished gratitude, swept over Rhoda, left her poised between emotions. For an instant she stared at Reuben Friend unbelievingly, as if he were some new and strange and improbable species not classified in the books. Here was a man who knew her mother, remembered her mother not because of Rhoda Fair's embellished younger career, but for a benefaction, a virtue! He seemed to pass her criminal fame as negligible; to be able to see only the fine, sane, neighborly latter end. The girl's eyes filled with mist. It was a new, an illuminating experience, a great and moving experience, a modifying experience. She wanted to speak, to express her gratitude, to caress with the kiss of grateful words the kindly, simple soul of this man whom the world held great and upon whom, in spite of his race, it had heaped honors and dignities. Here was such a fragment of data as might form the corner stone of a sure philosophy. . . . At the moment it was an incomprehensible thing to Rhoda, a shock—in time, when the significance of it had made itself apparent to her, it would assume importance, almost earthquake importance, in shifting and crumbling the strata of her life. . . .
Mrs. Friend broke in upon this. "Are you to meet friends? Surely you are not alone? Such self-reliance as our young women have today! Will you be stopping at Shepherd's? And will you take the evening train tomorrow for Jerusalem? Or do you go by way of Haifa?"
It was a flood of questions with no intervening dams to admit of answers, but in the end she could think of nothing more to ask for the moment.
"I am going by way of Haifa," said Rhoda. Mr. Ghafir said—"
"What?" asked Mr. Friend. It seemed he had a tremendous interest in every word uttered by that man.
"He said no one should see Jerusalem until he had first visited the north—friendly Galilee, he called it—and Tiberias and the fertile plains. 'Jerusalem,' he said, 'should be the climax, not the commencement. Otherwise there will be only disappointment.' And he said another thing which I remember, 'Go to Jerusalem only when Jerusalem calls you.' I did not understand him."
"But I understand him," said Reuben Friend, "and he is right—doubly right. It is so easy to misread Jerusalem, to misjudge, to carry back tales of squalor and filth, of barrenness and inclement rock. The eyes and the heart must be prepared. . . . Oh, the departed glory of Zion!" His eyes closed and his fine head sank upon his breast.
It was then, while the old man remained sunk in melancholy reverie, that Rhoda's eyes found time to glance covertly about the room at her fellow-passengers. She felt her glance drawn upward, and there, leaning over the railing of the mezzanine and staring down at her, she saw Paul Dare.
Chapter Eight
THOSE last few days before the vessel touched at Naples, Paul Dare was in a curious state of mind, uneasy, uncomfortable, and apprehensive. For the first time in his recollection he was unable to think clearly, to utilize efficiently the fine machinery of his intellect. He was feeling rather than thinking, and the sensation was novel; he was swayed and shaken by emotions. His life was a carefully planned life, laid out with certain careful omissions; hitherto the plan—a cut-and-dried geometrical thing composed by drafting instruments—had worked out. He had lived by rule of thumb. Now, however, he was discovering that the destinies of a hu
man being depend not altogether upon himself and his resolutions; that plans made by oneself are subject to interruption and modification by contacts with other human beings. Always he had believed he could live for himself and by himself, not subject to the shortcomings and emotional upheavals of the ordinary run of men. He believed he could disregard those things which mold and shape the lives of common people. . . . Now he suffered from a suspicion that he was not immune and that, perhaps, beneath his armor of cold intellect lay something alive, plastic, reachable by common, vulgar outside influences—and that this neglected, forgotten, unsuspected portion of him was powerful to irresistibility. The thought shamed him. He resented it bitterly—but could not abolish it. A woman lay at the root of it all. He had regarded women as the complementary sex, not essential to man's welfare, certainly of no paramount importance in his life—possessing their usefulness to the race and to such individuals as felt the need of them; perhaps even to himself when a fitting time and a fitting woman arrived. But his selection of a wife, if ever he selected one, would be in cold blood, upon a higher plane and not as the beasts of the field. He would select for cause, and his choice would be the woman ideal to supplement and further his career. He believed love to be a matter of the imagination, a storybook thing. Mere physical infatuation he could understand, for it was biological and science could analyze and discuss and write textbooks about it—but love!
Then had come Rhoda Fair, beautiful, it is true—as a mere matter of physical selection a fit mate for any perfect physical man; intelligent in her superficial way, scarcely educated at all according to his standards—and he could not keep his mind away from her nor compel himself to eschew her society. He set it down as a common infatuation, but, nevertheless, he studied his symptoms honestly, and gradually began to harbor doubts. It might be something more; it might be this woman, by some means mysterious to him, had become necessary to his peace of mind. He did not think in terms of happiness, yet he was compelled to admit that when he was with her he was curiously delighted, exalted; actually happy; and that when he was absent from her he was uneasy and miserable.
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