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

by Clarence Budingtion Kelland

  She had a feeling that this attitude was assumed, or that, because of something more important than herself, she was temporarily forced into the background. There was about Jaunty, in moments when he was not exerting himself to entertain, a certain tenseness, an anxiety, as if something impended.

  Paul Dare arose first, stiffly, and bade them good night. Jaunty lifted his eyebrows and smiled at his back. "Needs dusting," he said, but made no further comment. A few moments later Rhoda got up from the divan. "I'm tired. Good night, Jaunty."

  "I'll walk to your room."

  "No," she said firmly, but was astonished at his ready acquiescence.

  She walked back through the queer, rambling old hotel which seemed to have no plan or reason; the way to her room led through the small alcove where dragomen had their separate table, then down two steps into a large room which seemed to have no purpose whatever, then up three steps into another chamber which might be a writing or smoking room. At the end of this was an angling stairway which led up to another public room, and it was off this that her bedroom opened. She entered and closed the door.

  Half an hour later Jaunty Bailey turned from his Oriental companion to saunter aimlessly back through the lobby. He had learned the number of Rhoda's room and how to reach it from the gesticulating little clerk. He traversed the alcove and the first room, reaching at last the staircase, but there he paused, for sitting in a chair at its foot was Paul Dare.

  "I was expecting you," Dare said, unemotionally.

  "Well, I didn't disappoint you. What's the general idea?"

  "You were going to Miss Fair's room."

  "Was is wrong, Professor. I’m going."

  "Not t-night," said Paul. "I'm sure she wouldn't care to have you."

  "Where," demanded Jaunty, "did you get your ticket of admission to this show?"

  "On the boat," said Paul. "I haven't the remotest idea what this is all about or why you should pester Miss Fair, but, frankly, I don't like your looks, Mr. Bailey, and while I have no ethical objections to what is obviously your profession—"

  "What is my profession?" snapped Jaunty.

  "I think the correct term for it is cracksman."

  "That's English," said Jaunty, coolly. "In America we say crook—or if you wish to be more precise as to the several branches, there's yegg, peterman, dip, and so forth, ad infinitum. And you're guessing."

  "You tried to rob Miss Fair. I suspect you did rob the purser's safe."

  "Following which?" Jaunty asked, and his eyes began to narrow.

  "Nothing," said Paul with a shrug. "It doesn't concern me."

  "Then—" said Jaunty, and motioned significantly toward the door.

  "After you," said Paul. "You can't afford a rumpus in this hotel."

  Jaunty's eyes blazed and he advanced a step; Paul met him, and they stood for an instant eye searching eye. Then Jaunty smiled and threw his hands palm out.

  "You win," he said, "this time. But take my advice, Professor, and keep the fingers off the buzz saw. I get prejudiced against people who meddle with me."

  "I suspect that's a threat. In that case, let me state my position. I've nothing to do; no object whatever. My time is at my own disposal. It is apparent you've followed Miss Fair from America. . . . Of course I know who she is. . . . It would look as if she had something you were exercised to obtain. Well, to provide myself with an occupation—and for other reasons which are not pertinent—I think I shall see that you don't get it."

  "Knight-erranting, eh?"

  Dare flushed. "I've a sufficient motive."

  Jaunty stood clicking the nail of his forefinger against his teeth while he appraised his antagonist. He wondered just how much of a nuisance this young man could make of himself, and erred on the side of underestimation. "Declaring a little private war, eh? Well, look out for yourself. You know you can't look in the back of a book and find an answer to this."

  "I've decided to study other things beside books," said Dare, and was immediately astonished at what he had said, for this was his first conscious knowledge of such a determination.

  "Let it lay as it falls. . . . Now suppose we compromise, as the lawyers say. It is rather necessary for me to speak to Rhoda, but I suppose you'll insist on tagging along. . . . By the way, Professor, you do bob up. It's a disagreeable habit. Overcome it. So, side by side, let us march to her door, and you can be the chivalrous knight to your heart's content. . . . " Then, as Paul hesitated, "She wants a little talk as much as I."

  "We'll see as to that," said Paul, and they ascended the stairs together, stood side by side as Jaunty rapped on Rhoda's door, and waited for her response.

  "What is it?" she called.

  "It's I—Jaunty, but your highly literate friend is here to see that I behave myself. I want to see you."

  "Are you really there, Mr. Dare?"

  "I am," said Paul.

  "Just a moment, then," said Rhoda, and presently she appeared, swathed in a voluminous boudoir gown which did not detract from her loveliness. "What is it?" she asked.

  "If you can get the erudite Sir Galahad to step out of earshot I'm bursting out in a rash of talk."

  "I'll sit there," said Paul, pointing to a chair across the room. Bailey and Rhoda seated themselves upon a cushioned bench, and in these bizarre conditions opened their interview.

  "Who," he asked, "is this man Dare?"

  "A tourist," she said.

  "Before that?"

  "Professor in some college."

  "Do you know that, or are you taking his word?"

  "Am I on the witness stand?" she asked, with an attempt at pertness.

  "You are," he said, grimly. "What do you know about him?"

  "Very little."

  "He was the man who interfered in our little amusement aboard ship. What does he know?"

  "Nothing."

  "Is he, by any chance, following you about?"

  "Why," she countered, "are you so interested in him?"

  "You might pay yourself the compliment of thinking it is jealousy," he said, lightly, "but it isn't." He almost snapped out the last words. "Right now I'm interested in everybody I don't know or can't place."

  "Jaunty, why are you here? What are you up to?"

  "Business, my dear, business. But who am I to rob the newspapers of their rights? One of these days they'll tell you all about it with frills—but I do hope they won't mention my name." He laughed with his old-time gayety. "You can't imagine how hard I'm working to efface myself. I don't care a snap of my finger for fame."

  "What do you care for?" she asked, and the question was sincere, not provocative. She wondered where the roots of this man lay, what subterranean rivers they tapped. He was not easily to be fathomed, whether he was only surface, dangerous as smooth, glittering surfaces may be, or if there were depths and strengths concealed beneath.

  He did not reply for an instant; his eyes became expressionless, as those of one who engages in introspection. Then be shrugged his shoulders.

  "Care for!" he repeated after her. "If you're thinking of one sort of caring, I care for you. If you're thinking of another—of the sort of thing which makes life important to some men—it isn't so easy to say. Ambition? A great urge?" He lifted his shoulders and grimaced humorously. "Not money, and I just disclaimed a hunger for fame. . . . certainly not power. No, I think, if the truth were dragged up for the sun to shine on, that the only thing I care for vitally is getting away with it—if you follow me. Sort of art for art's sake. Planning a good job and pulling it off. . . ."

  "But nothing at the end, no final purpose?"

  His glance fixed, his eyes became curiously blank and expressionless. "Now what put that into your head?" he asked.

  "I don't know!" And she did not. The thought had come to her compellingly—not only as to him, but as to herself, as to Dare, as to Saffoury—as to anybody. What was anybody's ultimate object? What did they aim for, and why? And what was the use of it? And Jaunty, with all his abilities, his per
sonality, his possibilities, seemed less purposeless than anybody else. Most people desire to reach the other bank of some river; Jaunty seemed to desire only a row of slippery stepping-stones and not to think ahead of the one to which he was about to leap. Her thought changed and she frowned. "Did you know the police have dragged me into that thing?"

  "So you did see the Paris Herald. Yes, I knew. As a matter of fact, I saw to it."

  "You what?"

  "The only way to get a thing is to want it hard enough," he said. "I want you. The only way to get you is to have you with us—the naughty people who irritate the police and have all the fun. If you're on the other side I can't get you, now can I?" He was not in the least abashed.

  "Do you mean that you—you jobbed me?" She used the patter term. "You framed me!"

  "You see," he said, as if it were sufficient explanation, "I love you."

  "Suppose I had been taken?"

  "You weren't." This, in his eyes, was a sufficient reply.

  "Look here, Rhoda, the world wouldn't let you play your own game. There's too much history back of you. You're as marked as a tattooed man, and it was sure to come. . . . And I want you before rheumatism settles in our aged bones. . . . It isn't as if you were anybody else—as if you really had a scruple to your name, for you know you haven't."

  "Jaunty!"

  "You know it's so. You were balancing on the fence—waiting for something to give you a push one way or the other. I galloped in and gave you the push—and here you are. And a grand couple we'll be. Why, there's nothing we can't tackle! You've everything your mother had, plus beauty, which she had to get along without, and I stand pretty well at the head of my class." His eyes became boyish, eager, mischievous. "My dear, but we'll have a gorgeous life!"

  "In prison," she said, shortly.

  "Was your mother ever in prison?"

  This was unanswerable. She stared at the floor, knowing she should despise him for what he had done, yet not able to despise him. . . . His eyes were upon her, somber for the moment as he studied her face, for he was able to comprehend her as little as she did him. No matter what his pretense of knowledge, she was a mystery to him, baffling, provocative. He would have given much to read her thoughts, to know the effect of his words, but she was inscrutable. Whatever turmoil raged within created no ripple without. Her poise was admirable and he gave it his admiration. It was a game of concealments played by masters. When she extended her hand abruptly and said good night, neither knew more of the other than at the beginning of the talk.

  Nor was there mention of a future meeting, yet both knew they must meet, must struggle until one surrendered, for between two such personalities could be no compromise. Bailey crossed the room to Dare, "Come on, Sir Lancelot," he said. Rhoda from her door cast him a glance eloquent with gratitude. It made his heart behave strangely. "Good night, Mr. Dare," she said, "and thank you!"

  At breakfast next morning there was no sign of Bailey, though at a corner table she saw the beady-eyed, swarthy man with whom he had engaged in conversation the night before. Paul Dare was present, however, constrained of manner, watchful of himself. For a man with no interest in his fellows many questions occurred to him with reference to Bailey, but he did not ask them. Pride constrained him, as well as the well-informed habit of attending strictly to his own affairs. Yet he wondered what had passed between Rhoda and this debonair individual, who he was certain, was of the criminal profession. Was it a prearranged meeting? And what was the significance of it? . . . As for Rhoda, she was inscrutable to him as she had been to Jaunty; he could make nothing of her. Certainly she did not seem to be a person with something on her mind. With the school-master, scientist part of him he wondered how she, a fugitive from justice, could carry on as a normal individual. Fugitives, with whom his acquaintance was slight, were to him furtive, fearful creatures, who dodged and peered around corners, whose cheeks wore the pallor of constant fear. What he did not know was that the business of being a fugitive was much like any other business—one was occupied with it when it was necessary, and at other moments forgot it to act as normal people act. Nobody can be a fugitive twenty-four hours a day. . . . And because Rhoda baffled him, was written in a language he could not read, her fascination grew upon him.

  Let the truth be known, he did not want to love her, did not desire to love any woman—least of all one with possible criminal taint in her blood; one who certainly had guilty knowledge of a crime and enjoyed the acquaintance of wrongdoers. It was not his moral sense which was affronted, he told himself, but rather his sense of the fitness of things. He argued with himself that to be a thief was, at its worst, to be guilty of bad taste. To have it known that he was married to such a person would be a drag upon his career—and yet could it bring more ruin than already lay about him? He might as well jump from the top of a cliff as to fall the last hundred feet of it. He shrugged his shoulders, admitting that the thing was on the knees of the gods, and watched in his laboratory manner to see what was going to happen. Anyhow, he hoped it was mere infatuation which would run its course and vanish.

  "I suppose," said Rhoda, "you are still determined to go on to Tiberias today?" There was no reference to the happenings of last night either then or later. Respecting that matter both were oddly reticent.

  "If you have not changed your plans."

  She smiled at the bald tenacity of the man;—this man who seemed to have no idea how a girl should be approached, how a courtship should be conducted. Really, she would have liked to help him. If only it were some other girl he was pursuing and she could be his confidante! She would have enjoyed that. As it was, she could not help wondering how it was going to come out—what his discovery as to the nature of his emotions would be. What girl would not wonder? It is exciting to know that a man loves you, but to know that a man is pursuing you about to find out whether he loves you or not must, in the very nature of things, become exciting.

  "I'm going," she said, "and you may as well ride in the compartment with me. If you really are going to follow me all over the world I might as well get what good I can out of you. You can speak to French officials for me and run errands and reach things down out of the rack—and be as entertaining as possible. Saffoury says it's a hot, dusty, uninteresting eight hours' ride."

  But, in spite of this demand, he found himself strangely inarticulate during that long, uncomfortable ride—he whose occupation had been exposition and who was rated as eloquent! Depressed he was and distrait, even uncomfortable and embarrassed, like some inexperienced youth making his first call. Rhoda eyed him maliciously.

  "The boys," she said, "must have fought to get into your classrooms. You make yourself so interesting."

  He looked at her helplessly, finding no words in his vein with which to retort; and from that moment, discovering how she could torment him, she showed him such an impish, perverse phase that he passed from bewilderment to bewilderment, holding his temper amazingly well, it must be admitted, but scorning himself for a lack-wit and a lout.

  "You might," she suggested, "deliver one of your lectures. You committed them to memory, did you not?"

  "I am sorry to be so dull a companion," he said, heavily. "You might at least pay me a compliment, or ask if I'd like an orange, or point out Mount Hermon over there."

  "I cannot talk about trifles with you."

  "And I, I'm afraid, have no capacity except trifles—so what shall we do?"

  "Miss Fair," he said, abruptly, after a pause during which she had closed her eyes to the heat and the glare, "have you ever been in love?"

  "Ah," she said, encouragingly, "that's much better. You've no idea how you improve!"

  "You are pleased to be flippant with something which is very important to me."

  "Mr. Dare," she answered, "since first I met you I have discovered nothing of importance to you but yourself." She did not say this lightly, but with intention. Perhaps the heat and the dust had something to do with it, but she regretted it when he turned hi
s face full toward her and she saw his eyes.

  "Doubtless you are right," he said. "Nothing was important to me but myself—and discovering truths—until I encountered you."

  "And were you satisfied?"

  He studied over that. "I think I was content," he said, after a moment. "I thought life was giving me about what it gave to other men."

  "And you have changed your mind?"

  "Now," he said, "I don't know if it was giving me less—or infinitely more."

  It was her turn to be puzzled. "That is a dark saying," she said. "Shine your lantern on it."

  "My meaning," he said, "was that I am in doubt if a man is made happier by allowing any other human being to invade his life. I wonder if it is not the truth that all pain—mental pain—comes from contacts with others." He paused. "If you hold no friendships, there can be no betrayal of friendship; if you give no affection, there can be no sorrow from the loss of the ones for whom you care; if you allow no other life to touch yours, then the misfortunes, the demands, the exigencies of that life cannot claw you and paw you and drag at you with their importunities."

  "Perhaps," she said, "but the loneliness!"

  "I do not understand why you fear loneliness. It has been satisfactory to me."

  "Then, as I think I said to you once before, you are the most pitiful man I have ever seen."

  Saffoury came sidling along the running board and thrust his fez through the open window. "Is there somethings," he asked, "that my young lady will wishing?"