RHODA FAIR: The Classic Novel of a Woman at the Crossroads

by Clarence Budingtion Kelland

  He reached a determination: If upon mature deliberation and careful examining, this thing which troubled him proved to be infatuation, he would have none of it; if, on the contrary, it showed itself to be love—this love whose existence he had denied as a sentimental, maudlin embellishment of something purely physical—he would let it have its way and see what came of it. On the whole, he endeavored to make of it a sort of scientific adventure, a laboratory investigation. For once he was deceiving himself deliberately.

  Now he was on the Esperia, in a state of mind, for facts were in his possession which had not been there before. He had succeeded in following Rhoda where Jaunty Bailey had failed, and he proposed continuing to follow her until his malady had run its course or until it proved chronic and incurable.

  He waited for her after luncheon, made aware by her cold acknowledgment of his presence that he was unwelcome. But that did not matter.

  "I will walk with you," he said.

  "It is usual," she replied, icily, "to ask permission."

  "The circumstances are unusual," he replied. And then, when they were out of earshot of any other passenger, "Did you know the safe on our vessel was robbed after she docked?"

  "No." Her breath caught; she thought of Jaunty Bailey and of his need for the sinews of war.

  "It was," he said. "A considerable sum of money was taken—and in a skillful, workman-like manner which bespoke the expert."

  "I am not interested," she said.

  "Are you sure?" His keen eyes were upon her face; she had again the feeling that she was a specimen under his microscope.

  "What do you mean?"

  "This," he said, "may explain. It is a clipping from the Paris Herald."

  She took it from his fingers and read, saw her own name, her mother's name, and cold fingers closed about her heart. It was the sort of feature story which is the backbone of modern journalism, the sort of story which is read about firesides and discussed—a "human interest" story.

  THE QUEEN IS DEAD LONG LIVE THE QUEEN

  That was the key line of the head; then followed the story:

  Rhoda Fair, reformed queen of confidence women, is dead, but her daughter and namesake has taken up her mother's career, is the information Detroit police arc broadcasting. For twenty years the mother lived within the law, though maintaining relations with her old-time professional acquaintances. Rhoda Fair, the younger, signalized her mother's passing by participating in one of the most daring and successful jewel robberies in Detroit's criminal annals. The actual robbery was perpetrated by a man, who, with his booty, was traced to the Fair residence. The young woman skillfully threw the police off the trail for a time until she and her accomplice could escape. No trace has been found of her, though her picture and description are in the hands of every police department in America. "Blood will tell," says the Detroit police, who knew the young woman's mother and father, "and we may expect to be electrified by a series of depredations like those with which Rhoda Fair the elder used to baffle and bewilder and laugh at the detective forces of two continents."

  That was all, a brief dispatch, but a story well worth cable tolls.

  It was unexpected, a shock, and yet, somehow, it did not surprise her. Never until the moment she read those words had she foreseen that she would be suspected of complicity—and yet how natural it was that she should be suspected. . . . She was an accomplice, for were the stolen diamonds not on her person at that moment? What she did not realize was the full effect of this thing; how far it went toward making her decision for her. She was outside the law, wanted by the police. That, in her soul, she was innocent of crime did not matter; that she retained the jewels for reasons sufficient to herself would have scant influence should she be captured. It was too soon for her to realize that she was tainted with crime and never could free herself from the stain; it was ineradicable, permanent. She was more than the daughter of her mother and interesting as such; she was her mother's successor!

  She lifted her eyes coolly to Paul Dare's face and extended the clipping.

  "Well," she asked.

  That coolness, that inability to know alarm for herself—intelligent effrontery which had carried her mother through many crises—was hers, discovered itself as her possession in this instant. Her attitude nonplused the young man.

  Paul Dare was conscious of something more than regret, of a pang, acute, heart-gripping. He did not want this lovely girl to be criminal, tainted by heredity, a social outcast destined for some squalid, evil end. Intellectually this was wrong; he knew it was wrong. In the light of pure reason, what difference could it make? His research and his study and his thinking had taught him there was no such thing as moral right or wrong—but this thing touched him in a part where reason did not dwell. He strove to make his voice cool as hers, to maintain the character he had erected for himself.

  "In the circumstances," he said, dryly, "it is foolhardy for you to flaunt your identity."

  She made no denial; pride would let her make no explanation. Besides, she resented him and his attitude of intellectual superiority, what she considered a pose.

  "It is necessary," she said. "There are such things as passports. My photograph and name are on mine."

  He nodded. "You are well off, rich," he said. "You were not driven to crime by necessity." Here was the professor speaking, the collector of data. . . . "It is very interesting. Was this act the result of an impulse? Does it resemble an appetite with you? When did you first feel the desire—"

  She interrupted. "Professor Dare," she said, icily, "why continue this absurd pose? It really is impossible for anyone to be as inhuman as you pretend to be. You are making believe, as a small boy plays Indian."

  She startled him. Was his attitude toward men and life a pose—something artificial which he had allowed to rear itself about him? Was he genuine? He was compelled to put these questions to himself; the curse of intellectual honesty compelled it. Was he, as he understood himself, the real Paul Dare, or was Paul Dare hidden and submerged under a spurious personality, a make-believe, as she said? Was he a small boy playing games? . . .

  "Do you think that? Do you honestly think that, or did you speak so to wound me?"

  "It would be apparent to a child," she said, mercilessly.

  "Yet it is not apparent to me," he said, and, perceiving the pain, the apprehension, the bewilderment in his eyes, she almost found it in her heart to sympathize. "But," he said, "you may be right. It may be I am poorly acquainted with myself. . . Do you know why I am on this vessel?"

  "I am not curious."

  "It is to be near you. I felt it to be necessary. I must make sure if this emotion which you excite in me is mere infatuation or love. I am disturbed, more disturbed than you can imagine, for I have not hesitated to affirm that love does not exist."

  There was a glint of impish humor in her eyes. "And if it prove to be mere infatuation?" she asked.

  "I shall be relieved. It can be abolished."

  "And if it be love?"

  He hesitated, looking down at her gravely, almost solemnly.

  "In that case," he said, "I shall marry you."

  She laughed a gay silvery laugh, which entranced him, provoked him. He felt an almost irresistible desire to take her in his arms. "Professor Dare—" she began.

  "Mr. Dare, if you please."

  "Mr. Dare, I was wrong. It can't be a pose. Nothing so absurd can be other than veritable. You are the most completely unhuman creature imaginable. Have you considered at all that I might not care to marry you?"

  "Why," he said, "it would be necessary. My peace of mind, my happiness, my career would require it."

  "Also," she said, "you are the most utterly selfish man in the world. . . . Now let me say a word for myself. To me it is a negligible matter whether you are infatuated with me, love me, hate me, or despise me. You do not interest me. I have no desire to see you or to speak with you." Suddenly her mood changed and she laughed again. "Can't you see how absurd you ar
e? In one breath you accuse me of being a thief, and in the next you speak of marrying me. Distinguished professors do not marry criminals."

  "Miss Fair," he said, so gravely that he compelled her attention, impressed her, compelled her to believe—and, because she did believe, to elevate him in her esteem, "if I loved you I should marry you, I should give you my name and all that goes with the title of husband, if you were ten times a criminal. That, I conceive, would be the part of love—if love, indeed, exists. . . ."

  She regarded him in silence, the splendid contour of his head, the sweep of his temples, the lean, hawk-like intelligence of his virile, handsome face. Never again was he to be negligible to her. She might hate him in the days to come, but never could she despise him. Absurd in some of his manifestations he might be, but never again absurd as a man. He became a fellow-creature to reckon with, no fantastic, dry-as-dust effigy of a man without emotions or passions; for she perceived that somewhere, obscured, perhaps, deeply overlaid and hidden so that it might never be reachable, was a sturdiness, a steadfastness, a bigness which made him worthy of any woman's consideration. . . . A flash of insight showed her that he might be big for good or big for evil as events caused his breaking from his shell. He would emerge a personage.

  "And what," she asked, "do you propose to do?" Again humor twinkled in her eyes and she became younger, merry, mischievous. "Tag after me over Europe, Asia and Africa until you can diagnose the state of your heart?"

  "Precisely that," he said, and she knew he meant it; knew he would follow in spite of discouragements, affronts, ridicule. She shrugged her shoulders with a feeling of helpless irritation. The situation had reached a point of difficulty which her experience had not equipped her to handle—for few young men had come courting. To rely wholly upon feminine instinct is sometimes to grasp at a straw. She wondered what to say, how to receive his announcement, when she saw approaching Mrs. Friend and blessed her for a timely appearance.

  "I was looking for you," said the good lady. "My husband and I have discussed you. You don't mind?" She smiled her hearty, kindly smile.

  "No, indeed. . . . May I present Mr. Dare, Mrs. Friend? He was a fellow-passenger—"

  "Yes, yes. How do you do, Mr. Dare?" He became negligible then as she went forward with what lay in her mind.

  "Cairo," she said, "is no place for a girl alone. It can't be done. It's not that sort of place. Of course you didn't understand. Africa isn't America by any manner of means. So my husband and I shall be glad to have you join our party while you are there. . . . He likes young people to talk to, but don't let him get on the subject of Maimonides and the Hebrew philosophers."

  "You are kind—too kind," said Rhoda. "But—"

  "So it is settled then. And now I must see if my husband needs anything. His rheumatism! And so active. If you will believe me, I cannot keep him quiet. He must go here and go there—and of course we are entertained everywhere. We are to meet Lord Allenby in Cairo—I'm so glad you will be with us. . ." Still chattering, she hastened along the deck, uneasy every instant she was separated from Reuben Friend's side.

  "And I," said Rhoda to Paul Dare, "am going below for a nap." She left him abruptly, not knowing how otherwise to leave, and went below, troubled by the new situation which had arisen. It spelled security for her, if nothing else. Reuben Friend would be received by the authorities as an honored guest, and his companions as well. There would be a safe entry into Egypt. . . . But could she accept; could she be the recipient of such kindness when her benefactors did not know. . . . Before dinner-time she had taken the resolution to set her feet upon the honest road with the old Hebrew; to sail under no false colors.

  She found him in the writing-room in discussion with a Belgian baron of short, pudgy figure and white imperial, who always reinforced every statement he made by agreeing with it. "Yes," he was saying, "the Italian situation it was so bad. . . . Uh-huh. But then came Mussolini, and pouf! . . . Uh-huh. . . ." And so on.

  Reuben glanced up as she approached. "You wished to speak with me?" he asked.

  "For a moment, if I may."

  He excused himself and stood by her side, his head on a level with her own, and she looked into his narrowed, wise, sorrowful, kindly old eyes with a sensation of comfort spreading over her warmly.

  "Your wife," she said, "has asked me to travel under your protection—"

  "Yes, yes. It is best. It must be so."

  "But you do not know. You do not know who I am."

  "You are Rhoda Fair, and the daughter of Rhoda Fair. I know." He nodded his head three distinct times.

  "You know what my mother was—and my father?"

  "A good woman and a good man. . . . What went before is forgotten. I know."

  "But do you know that I am likely to be arrested when we reach Alexandria? There is a story in the Paris Herald—"

  "I read it yesterday," he said, placidly. "It makes it more necessary for you to be with someone who is known." He smiled, and again nodded his queerly shaped head, so broad and flat at the top.

  "You knew! And yet you—"

  "If you did the thing," he said, placidly, "then you must be protected until you can think. Yes, yes. . . . If you took the jewels in the impatience and restlessness of youth, you must have leisure to consider the act. Is it not so? For it was a first act and came, perhaps, from resentment because the world persists in setting you apart. . . . So. . . . But, myself, I believe there is some mistake. I think these police have added three and four to make seven." He lifted an expostulatory hand. "No, no, I do not ask you. It is your own concern. For me it does not matter. Either way you have need of friends."

  She regarded him a moment with level gaze, then her eyes clouded, her lips, between her teeth, quivered. "Oh!" she said in a strangled voice. "Oh! . . . Oh!" . . . and fled to the shelter of her cabin.

  Chapter Nine

  THERE was a minor thrill in the first sight of the white-baked, low-flung coast of Africa, but it was quickly dispelled by the harassments of landing at the port of Alexandria—in an Egypt ruled for the first time in centuries by Egyptians. Rhoda suffered with the other passengers in that low, evil-smelling customs shed where dark-skinned inspectors sought, it seemed deliberately, to enrage every tourist passing through their hands. Unclean money-changers pushed and jostled their way through the throng, jingling silver in filthy hands. On all hands arose an exasperated bleating as trunks and bags were dumped unceremoniously upon the grimy counter. In that place dark skins were in the ascendancy and apparently were making the most of it. Even when Rhoda, with Reuben Friend and his wife, were in a carriage driving to their hotel they were not through with it, for at the gate two final inspectors stopped them to run exploring hands over their persons. . . .

  Thence they drove through French streets, between buildings bearing French signs, to a French hotel where they partook of a French déjeuner. It was not Africa, not Oriental. Rhoda was disappointed. Again, when late in the afternoon they entered the compartment reserved for them on the splendid railroad left by the English, she was again disappointed. There was nothing romantic, nothing adventurous. It was not the United States—but it was far from being the Egypt of her dreams. But rapidly, under the failing twilight, she passed into that Egypt, along canal banks from which rose the tall, slanting yards of dahabeeyahs, beside which ran paths traversed by led camels, by natives mounted upon the rumps of tiny donkeys with twinkling feet—a land of jumbled mud villages, of veiled women, of white-domed mosques and slender minarets. Hot to suffocation it was and unspeakably dusty, even after the sun declined. . . . And then came the shouting and snatching and jostling of the station in Cairo; a platform thronged with hotel runners, Cook's agents, belligerent porters who seemed equally divided between those who possessed two eyes and those who had but one. . . . And the flies!

  Their arrival was expected, their baggage whisked from the racks above their heads, and at breakneck speed they were driven through strange, illuminated, half-discernible s
treets to the arabesque magnificence of Shepherd's Hotel. . . One should always arrive in a strange city, especially a fascinating city, by night. It should not be permitted to see until one is in the heart of things—then to awake, to look about one, to find that one is there and that expectations are fulfilled. . . . Rhoda was glad to seek her bath and her bed.

  There was to be but one day in Cairo, and Reuben Friend saw to it she spent it over the best counters. . . . She became acquainted with color; until she stepped upon the terrace of the hotel she had not been aware what color may do for a world which, in the Occident, takes pride in making itself drab and uninteresting. Color blazed, flaunted itself, delighted the eye. The streets were a mass of moving color; tall, dignified dragomen, topped by red fezzes, but purple and wine and azure and the yellow of mustard, milled before the steps, awaiting patrons; horse runners in brilliant red, with baggy, shapeless trousers and gold-embroidered jackets hastened along; women in black, veiled or unveiled, venders of fly-whisks, postage stamps, necklaces, clustered as near as the overbearing hotel attendants would permit. She loved it—loved the shops, delighted in the exotic, if odorous, atmosphere of the bazaar where one might buy veritable attar of roses from a smiling, deferential man named Saloman, who daubed his scents upon your arm with a glass dropper and offered you tea in small cups and amber cigarettes. . . . She quickened to the suggestion of latticed balconies behind which sat the invisible women, subject to Mohammedan discipline. . . . For a day she forgot herself and lived; lived and laughed and chattered until Reuben nodded approvingly and patted his wife's arm.