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

Page 11

by Clarence Budingtion Kelland


  "A breath of cool air," she said. "Nothing else."

  "I cannot make it," he said, gravely. "It would be one of the miracles of Jesus Christ."

  "You are not a Mohammedan?"

  "I am Christian," he said, and bowed with dignity. "Though the uncle of my wife is Mohammedan, and his childrens. I have three childrens. My eldest daughter, Mary, goes at this time to the school kept by the Friends. My son I am hoping to send to school if I am affording it. My youngest daughter she has too little for any school of any kind." He smiled slowly and lifted his eyes to hers with a curious, sidewise movement. "I am once owning a hotel in Nazareth—"

  "You told me about that," she said, shortly.

  "Yez? . . . You see I am thinking much about it, for I am not young, and to make a fresh start is with difficulty. . . . But see, we are enterings the mountains, and not so long we come to Tiberias."

  "And this dreadful day will be over! Is there a decent hotel there?"

  "It is good. A German owns it. Once he was only a waiter, but he is buying it from the owner—"

  "Very well," she said, cutting off his garrulity and leaning back in her corner with closed eyes, thinking to herself how she was afflicted by one man who would not talk enough and by another who ran on endlessly. Saffoury watched her gravely for a moment and withdrew, reflecting on the peculiarities of Occidental folks.

  At last they arrived at the sun-baked station where the dragoman placed them in a small car for the few miles' drive to Tiberias itself, along the shores of the stormy lake, past the hot baths and the Jewish monastery on the hillside. Presently, honking madly at dogs, donkeys, camels, Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans, it drew up before the hotel with its high stone terrace, and they alighted to enter. On the broad porch Saffoury paused to shake hands with a tall stranger dressed in well-fitting blue serge, a massive, dusky young man whose heavy face lighted with friendliness and whose small, narrow-set eyes crinkled as he smiled.

  "Es-sâlamu 'aleikum," said the young man.

  "Aleikum es-sâlam, Hana Effendi," replied Saffoury.

  Bustling about, speaking to this man and to that man as a citizen well known and of mark might be expected to do, Saffoury escorted Rhoda to her room with its iron bed, clean and cool, its washstand with bowl, pitcher, and candlestick. . . . She closed the door and threw herself upon the bed, travel-worn and not a little lonely. . . .

  After a time the dragoman rapped upon her door to announce that dinner was in readiness. "Also," he said, as she emerged, "we are having good fortunes. It is not necessary we should hire the little car to make the journey to Nazareth. My friend, Hana Effendi, also is going, and he has invite us to ride. It is better."

  "And who," she asked, "is Hana Effendi?"

  "He? Oh, he is important person. His office is police inspector for this district. I theenk he is a Greek. . . "

  Chapter Eleven

  RHODA awoke to a scene more truly Oriental than Cairo, the bazaar of Damascus, anything she had hitherto seen in this near-eastern land—more Oriental because more intimately of the people, savoring of their life when not on exhibition. Across the street, chattering and laughing, came half a dozen women, water jars on heads, some in print dresses, some in a sort of thin, wound trousers to the ankles, all barefooted. They scattered before a donkey ridden by an acquaintance—a bearded man who drove them on to the narrow sidewalk, waggling his beard and laughing at them in high good nature. A couple of officers in French uniform on visit; a laden camel led by a ragged man upon a donkey; children; crowing cocks; a tall, handsome Cossack in marvelously fitting blue uniform and tall cap from Heaven only knew where; dignified Arab elders in brown robes with tasseled scarfs held in place upon their heads by a sort of crown of cords; venders of cheap pottery; a porter out of the Arabian Nights who dropped his burden of empty bottles on the concrete steps and set up a tremendous wailing; a harridan in loose hair with flailing arms who pursued a recreant husband up the street, screaming the Arab equivalent for Billingsgate, pointing out the defects in his ancestry and mentioning certain unmentionable characteristics of his own—all these passed before her in the brief interval she stood before her window before descending to breakfast. Somehow it gave her a sense of intimacy, of being a part—not of being in a seat at some rehearsed spectacle. It was real; those people coming and going were living real lives, and this was their life. Here was home and here were neighbors; they knew one another intimately as neighbors knew one another back home in Michigan. She had never thought of these Asiatic folks as people living ordinary lives, but now she saw that they did so. It took away something of her loneliness. . . .

  In the office Saffoury waited to present Hana Effendi, whose manners proved to be those of Paris rather than of this backwater of a dead civilization. She liked him. People always did like Hana Effendi unless they happened to meet him in the way of business, for there always seemed to be something to fill him with the desire to laugh. His eyes, small and closely set though they were, wanted constantly to laugh, and there were laughter lines radiating from the corners of them. He quite belied the belief that small eyes crowding upon a nose give a man a look of suspicion, of meanness. True, his lips were heavy and his cheeks occupied a trifle too much territory, but it was a pleasant, reassuring, merry face for all that.

  "Mademoiselle," he said, and even as he said it he seemed to be laughing at some recollection, "I am lucky to be going to Nazareth today. I am—how do you say in New York?—shot full of luck."

  "It is more than kind of you," she said. "When will you wish to start?"

  "Whenever mademoiselle is ready. Did you sleep well? Nowhere are such cocks as crow in Tiberias—through the whole night." He paused to laugh at the cocks. "And did the king of the fleas come to see you? It is a saying here that the king of fleas greets all visitors."

  "I slept very well indeed. And does Mr. Dare go with us?"

  "He is in the dining-room, going on a bust—you see I know your United States language!—on Evian water. He is ready, I think! . . . Do you know all the new way of saying things in America? Oh, your argot—I eat it alive."

  That moment was chosen by a small, swarthy individual to push past them unceremoniously. Hana Effendi paused to watch him through the door and out upon the gallery—and even in this he found something to make his eyes dance.

  "Do you see him?" He waggled his head. "He is a mos' bad man, that one. He will make work for me. He does not understand that I know him, I think. Oh, there will be a party in this neck of the woods now!"

  Rhoda also recognized the swarthy man; it was he with whom Jaunty Bailey held earnest conversation in the Hotel Victoria in Damascus.

  "Who is he?" she asked.

  "Now you have me up the stump. What he is—yes. Who he is is a cat with other colors. A Levantine, I think." She noted the curious way he had of accenting that word. "Where he appears there comes big trouble." He sighed and then laughed, "And the hot weather comes and I am so lazy." He shook his finger after the disappearing man as one does at a child. "See you, it is not the Turks here any more; not on your tintype, friend; it is the Br-r-ritish, so don't be biting off what you can't chew." The prospect, whatever it was, seemed to put him into even better humor than before. "If you have any troubles tell it to the policeman," he said, arching his eyebrows at Rhoda.

  She smiled back at him, as who would not, but her eyes were not clear of apprehension. Where he appears there comes big trouble—so Hana Effendi described the man who was in some manner associated with Bailey. A cold palm seemed to touch her spine; premonition of impending evil events rested upon her with chill, gray dampness. She shivered.

  "While you go and eating breakfast," said Saffoury, "I am placing your theengs in the car."

  It was a welcome reminder; she withdrew to the dining-room. Somehow she did not want Hana Effendi to study her face just then; it was her feeling that, though his eyes were always jolly, they were not the less acute, for all that.. . .

  Presently the ca
r, with Hana Effendi at the wheel, was climbing the mountain which frowns down upon the Lake of Tiberias; off to the right were a series of oblong black splotches which Saffoury said were the tents of Bedouins. Upward and upward they climbed until they breasted the plateau, thence through a land of tilled fields, of flocks and herds they traveled at breakneck speed—as all motor vehicles seem to travel in Palestine. . . . For centuries its inhabitants had known no speed greater than that of a trotting donkey, an undulating camel, or perhaps of an Arab horse, but now they had become acquainted with speed and seemingly could not get enough of it. The world knows no such reckless driver as the Arab. It was a shock to see little cars crowded with men in long robes, bearded, sun-blackened, with scarfs and head-covering whipping behind them as they scudded along, careless of grade or curve. Modern progress, she reflected, was like some strong drug—to be taken in very moderate doses.

  Through that mixed and straggling village of Cana of Galilee they passed—the scene of the Marriage Feast and of the Turning of Water into Wine! It had no look of a spot where miracles could happen, but rather of a ruin where jackals might lurk. Saffoury, with pride, pointed out the stone building which once had housed his olive mill, and discussed at length with Hana Effendi the thanklessness of a government which had accepted his guidance for its armies through the mountain passes, and then refused to repay him the damage done by the conquered enemy.

  At last their destination swung into view, Nazareth, home of Joseph the Carpenter, and of Mary, where that Boy whose words were to alter the thought of a world, to give birth to a new conception of the duty of man to man, grew from youth to manhood. They passed that fountain called Mary's Well, saw young women idling there as young women must have idled nineteen centuries before, while they waited turn to fill their water jars. Their dress was the same, though their nationality was not the same. For the most part their faces were tottooed with dots and lines of blue—Arab women, not Jewesses—pitchers of the same shape and clay were balanced upon their heads, but in those heads what different thoughts, what different knowledge! The Nazarene was gone, scattered to the uttermost corners of the earth, and in his place and stead the Arab!

  . . . From that flowing fountain Mary, Mother of Jesus, had drawn daily her household water. Rhoda Fair was not religious, it had not been her training, yet she was impressed—impressed by the fact, impressed even more, perhaps, by the calm, the peace, the quiet of it all—the fulfillment of the promise of Mr. Ghafir. . . .

  Presently they stopped before the little whitewashed stone hotel with its iron balcony, and alighted. There Rhoda was to remain until Saffoury could apprise his relative of her coming, and she was shown to a room, the counterpart, even its iron bed and washbowl and candlestick, of the one in Tiberias. And there she washed and refreshed herself and rested, poised in anticipation, for something told her she stood upon the threshold of a new life—better or worse, she could not guess—but never again to be the same. It was the last, waning hour of the old. She did not regret it, nor was she afraid. Her arms were held out in welcome to what should come, to what solution should present itself. . . . Until this hour she had not lived, and she was ready for life, throbbing with readiness, eager, not without hope. . . .

  One man was present who would have to do with the modification—Paul Dare; another she felt to be near, imminent—Jaunty Bailey; another, whose part was to be of importance and he whose share was to be greatest of all, perhaps deciding, was she knew not where, Mr. Ghafir! Four men, playing conflicting parts! Three men whose parts would radiate from her, and one whose part was loftier, more occult, beyond the imagination of even the most imaginative! By and between them she would be jostled, pulled this way and that way, until her destiny became apparent. . . . How was she to see or understand that it could not be made apparent until hatreds and jealousies, hot desires, cold passions, had run their courses, until terror had fallen dreadfully, death had showed its face, and human beings were made to strip of pretenses and poses and posturings to stand exposed in stark reality before the seeing eye of Heaven! . . .

  Then and not until then would she know and decide; then would she choose when her great hour was upon her—and from it she would emerge—but how and what? Potentialities seethed within her of which she little suspected the heat and the force. If she were to reach heights it must be through depths. Had she known what lay before her it might be she would have flown the village of Nazareth as if it were a plague spot—or she might have remained, open-eyed, in fortitude, for her heart was a brave heart, her head was cool. She was the daughter of her mother. . . . Who may say?

  Chapter Twelve

  THE next week was one of passivity and adaptation; Rhoda accepted without question the plans which had been made for her, allowed her new friends—for they were in truth friends—to do with her as they desired. And, throughout, made conscious effort to fit herself into her environment. Fatima Kaleel—whose name she remembered signified friend, was a woman of comely olive face and brightest of black eyes. Her hair she wore in two braids according to the Arab fashion, and she dressed in plain, wrapper-like garments which gave additional shapelessness to a figure whose original beauties had vanished because of frequent motherhood. Her English was good, if sometimes hesitant and embarrassed. In the beginning Rhoda would have said Fatima Kaleel's outstanding attribute was a marvelous patience, but this estimate she was later to revise, putting in its place a less passive but more admirable quality. Her welcome was sincere, kindly, and if mixed with an evident curiosity and some awe it is no surprising matter.

  Her husband, Josef, a sallow, mustached little man who remained abed much, but issued forth occasionally in flannel nightgown and flapping slippers, was a carpenter like his remote namesake—a skilled workman and much sought after when in health. But now he was unable to ply his trade, indeed might never again be fit to mount scaffold or mortise plank, for it was but a matter of weeks since he had been brought home broken and unconscious from a distant village where he had fallen from a height. . . . So the small sum Rhoda contributed for lodging and keep was doubly welcome.

  Then there were the children, timid, round-faced, big-eyed creatures who hid behind their mother and stared—Josef and Mary and Hasna and Nami, all well and thriving, with both eyes, which was a blessing . . . . Three others there had been who were no more. None of them spoke Rhoda's language, nor did their father; it was not, therefore, a family into whose life it was easy to slip. Nor did they allow her to do so; something in their attitudes always reminded her that she had been sent by him, and therefore was not quite as other beings.

  "What day does he arrive?" Fatima Kaleel asked when the courage arose in her to do so.

  "He? Whom do you mean?"

  "The one who is called El Ghafir."

  "I do not know," Rhoda said. "Perhaps he is not coming."

  "But he is. That is known. It is talked in the bazaar."

  "Do you know him?" Rhoda asked.

  "I have never seen his face. But my father's father saw him."

  There it was again. He had been seen by some one two generations removed!

  "But he must have been a baby then," expostulated Rhoda.

  Fatima Kaleel glanced at her sidewise, queerly, and shook her head. "He was not a baby," she said, and after that would speak no more of him except to reply to one question.

  "Why," asked Rhoda, "do you call him El Ghafir, and not Mr. Ghafir, as I do?"

  "It is so we know him." Her eyes brightened and she nodded her head many times. "You do not understand the Arabic, that is it. It is not his name we speak, but what all men call him—El Ghafir. In your language it means The Watchman."

  The Watchman! All men knew him or knew of him and called him The Watchman! Why? What did he watch? How came he by that title and what was its significance. Rhoda beat upon Fatima Kaleel's reticence with a battery of questions. The Arab woman, Christian though she was, allowed some sign of superstitious fear to show in her fine black eyes.

&nbs
p; "It may not be good to talk. I do not know. I can only say you what all men say one another—that El Ghafir cannot die."

  "Cannot die!"

  "It is said so. And it must be true, for he has always been alive. My grandfather say his grandfather knew El Ghafir, and that his grandfather's grandfather knew him—and always he was at the same number of years."

  "It's nonsense," said Rhoda.

  "It is what they say. They tell that he did a sin against Jesus Christ when the Saviour walked among men. That is the tale. They say the Saviour gave him the punishment that he could not ever be dead. It is all I know."

  "The Wandering Jew!" Rhoda laughed. "Why, Fatima Kaleel, don't you realize what utter rubbish that is? There never was such a person. It's only a legend."

  "You ask, I tell," said Fatima Kaleel.

  Of course it was native superstition, absurd, laughable. It was what she might have expected to hear, and she gave up the effort to worm any facts concerning her friend from the woman. She changed the subject. "I have nothing to do," she said. "I must occupy my time. Will you help me to learn Arabic?"

  "If you wish, it shall be my pleasure," said the woman, establishing by the words that subtle difference between Rhoda and themselves which they were at pains to keep ever before her eyes. It was not so much a difference of caste, a social difference, as it was an occult difference. She was one sent. High obligations were indicated and never to be forgotten.

  In those days, too, Nazareth grew upon her, became familiar to her; she walked much, alone, with Paul Dare, with Hana Effendi—the latter of whom knew its every modern pebble, each nook and corner of its bazaar, where every lane and goat track led, and, almost, the name of every inhabitant. But he was curiously ignorant or indifferent to its history. It was springtime, and the sun, touching the white walls of the town, bedazzled the eye; beautiful it was with the different greens of cactus hedges, olive groves, and domestic fig trees—and upon the higher slopes of Jebel es-Sikh, the upward pointing fingers of cypress and the spread of cedars. The whole occupied a bowl in the great mountain to be reached only by steep, tortuous roads from the Plains of Esdraelon below, plains which stretched away green and fertile toward distant Acre to the northwestward, Mount Carmel, dim in the west, toward remote, mountain-guarded Jerusalem to the southward. It seemed to rest there at peace, in quiet satisfaction with itself; and perhaps because it was at peace and content it exercised a spell, such a spell as El Ghafir had spoken of. It anesthetized in the beginning, then, having quieted one, it invited to reflection and to thoughts of peace. . . . But daily there was one hour to which Rhoda looked forward—that hour just before sunset when from their pastures and grazing spots came home the shepherds with their flocks, goatherds and cowherds with their mingled lowing or bleating charges. Clear bells tinkled as the creatures moved along the main highway, and Rhoda loved to sit upon a fallen ashlar convenient on a terrace above the road to watch and to listen. The twentieth century dropped away, existed no longer. Nothing that mattered in the year 1924 mattered here and now, for it had no concern with this world and this life. As she sat looking over the coping at the roofs below her and the road still farther below, she was no longer Rhoda Fair, daughter of her mother, a battleground for conflicting desires and emotions and points of view. She was only a detached human creature without identity. . . . Not yet had she begun to think; she was allowing herself to bask, to bathe in this glorious relief from pressure.

 

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