"What is it? Why should we not walk with Miss Fair?"
"I think," said Hana Effendi, "she would not desire it. No. Most certainly not. . . . Oh, I have bones very sensitive to trouble, and they have ached like—like all-git-out. But they did not ache enough for this."
"Please explain yourself. You are cryptic."
"Are you," Hana Effendi demanded, abruptly, "a good friend to Miss Fair?"
"I am."
"You knew her before she came to this country?"
"I crossed the ocean with her."
"Ah. . . . Then perhaps you know who she is?"
"Do you?" Paul asked, startled.
"I know."
There was a silence, tense, unpleasant. "Then," said Paul, "this walk tonight was on business—your business?"
"No. But it may have to become so."
"Are they—has it become official? Extradition proceedings?"
"My knowledge is not official. I have papers of New York. The story of Miss Fair was in one of them. That is how I knew."
"And what are you going to do?" Paul's voice was calm, but his mind was a tumult.
"Do? About that affair in America? But nothing. It is no concern of mine—until orders come. . . . But what happens in my district is my concern. She has just come out from a house it was not good to enter."
"What house?"
"A house I have been watching. But is hard to understand. I am not able to believe it—that she is mix up with this son of pigs. I think I must talk to her like a Dutch uncle."
Paul was thinking of Jaunty Bailey and the dead policeman. He tried not to think of that dreadful moment, the suddenness of that death, but he could not avoid it. All day he had been hearing the wailing of the women of the man's family, incessant, high-pitched, weighted with heartbreak. Tomorrow, he knew, the men would bear the body to the grave while the women remained at home with their grief, for their sex is not permitted to accompany the loved one to his last abiding-place. The loud grief affected him curiously; perhaps it was the first time he had been affected by the troubles or joys of other people unknown to him. It was a symptom of change. The woe of those women seemed his woe. . . . It was possible then to feel sympathy! It did matter what happened to others! Even though you escaped calamity yourself, you could not avoid the effects of calamity—not if you lived in the world and rubbed shoulders with its inhabitants. This was new wisdom to him. . . . And it was possible Rhoda's hands were reddened with that blood. If she were concerned in any way with the events which had brought about the killing, then blood guilt rested upon her. Paul shrank from the thought.
"We will go faster now," said Hana Effendi.
"To overtake her?"
"Yes."
"But"—Paul hesitated— "I don't want to see her—not tonight. I— To tell the truth, this thing has upset me."
Hana Effendi turned shrewd eyes upon his companion and asked a policeman's question, "What do you know about this, Mr. Dare?"
"Nothing."
Hana Effendi shrugged his shoulders. The denial did not convince him; on the contrary, it strengthened his fears. But he did not press the matter; instead, he lifted his voice and called to Rhoda. She paused with a sudden quick breath. Hana Effendi! Had he been following her? What had he seen? In the moment intervening between his call and their meeting she erected defenses.
"Mr. Dare and I called, but found you—walking."
"I was restless—and you see, I am safe."
"I brought the bundle of newspapers," he said.
"Thank you. . . . News from home. It seems years since I left America."
"May we return to the house with you?"
"Certainly. Fatima Kaleel will have coffee and little cakes."
Rhoda was on her guard, sensing a constraint, a something more apparent in Paul Dare's manner than in Hana's. But for all that she wanted to see the man, wanted to intrust something to his keeping. It was queer, the regard in which she held those jewels; strange what significance they had taken upon themselves. They had become a symbol, a symbol of the decision she would one day have to make. Somehow it seemed to her she could never make that decision without them, for they were concrete, capable of being seen and touched. . . . And they were threatened. For all of Jaunty Bailey's declaration that love of her alone had brought him to Nazareth, she felt intuitively that this would not have been enough. His necessities had driven him to attempt again to secure the jewels, and that she could not tolerate. They must remain with her, dangerous as they were to her own safety—must remain until she herself could decide how to dispose of them.
"Have you a place," she asked, "where something of value can be kept in safety?"
"Yes."
"Will you keep something for me?"
"Of course," he said. "But is it not safe with you? What reason have you for thinking it not safe?"
He smiled in the darkness at the skill of her counter, "Why, you have been warning me," she said in very surprise at his question.
Shortly they entered the house of Josef and ascended to the parlor. Rhoda took the rocking-chair, Paul Dare sat stiff and uncomfortably upon the bench, Hana Effendi stood with hands clasped behind his back and gazed down at Rhoda with eyes which were at once quizzical and troubled. None spoke. Then the Inspector saw the bundle of newspapers upon the dresser and lifting it, unfolded the sheets. For a moment he stood as if reading under the oil lamp before he proffered them to Rhoda.
"Your papers make themselves very interesting," he said. "Not dull like the English, nor biased with the opinion of the editor, like the French."
Rhoda glanced at the page held open before her eyes. It was a moment she had foreseen and dreaded—and her fears were confirmed. There looked back at her from the paper a picture of herself, recognizable; beneath it a journalist's phrase, "Beautiful daughter follows notorious mother's footsteps."
She sat very still; it was a moment to demand courage, real courage and character. Her hand did not tremble, nor did she utter startled outcry. Slowly, very slowly, she raised her eyes to Hana Effendi's reluctant, admiring, solicitous gaze.
"Of course you read this," she said.
He nodded.
"And now what?" she asked, steadily.
"And now—nothing, I hope. I am not official now. I am myself. I know many things I do not tell to Inspector Hana—yes. Things I do not have to tell him, because they are none of his business. But you mustn't crowd the mourners."
"I mustn't what?"
"It is American slang," he said, and smiled a shadow of his habitual smile. "There is a point at which I must no longer be myself, and then I am inspector of police."
"And that point is?"
"When something naughty happens in my district. Then I have no choice." He paused. "I am not an admirable man," he said. "You do not know where I come from, and I do not tell. I have been many places and have seen many things.
But I have come to rest here; I have planted myself—yes? I am permanent improvement. I have done things I am likely to forget, and not always have I thought kindly and acted kindly to peoples I am among. Not always. . . . But I am foolish now, you may think. That is why I stay." The smile was gone now, and a hungry look darkened his fine eyes. "I have stay here because I come and then I find these people need me. They are not my people. I butt in, as you say. But I am giving a square deal, and they learn it. They are good people, though very ignorant, and the sheiks pull wool over their eyes. I do not know why I give a darn, but I give a very big darn. . . "
"I understand," said Rhoda gently. She did understand. This man of striped past, of unsightly origins, perhaps, had found his work. He was another of the many throughout the world who are compelled by what they find to do, rather than doing the thing that is their choice. Some accident had set Hana Effendi down in this place, among this people, and he could not escape. Because all men are a compound of good and evil, of ideals and of selfishness, no man can prophesy his actions nor lay out certainly his future. Facts and envir
onment compel. And so, against his will, perhaps—bewilderingly to him, he had taken root and was engaged in the work appointed to him. He was ashamed of his enthusiasm; felt absurd that he—such a man as he believed himself to be—should be caught and held. . . . And yet he knew he was caught, knew his life henceforward lay here. It was a vocation.
"And so I am worried," he said.
"Do I worry you?"
"Like the very mischief," he said. "Oh, not this," pointing to the paper. "That is nothing. . . . But if by chance you came here for some reason, some reason I should have to notice! That is what worries me. . . . Because a thing is in the air. And you have hidden from me that you know the man who is going to pull it off."
"What man?" Did he know of Jaunty Bailey? Her heart missed a beat.
"Abdullah—the man whose house you visited tonight."
She could laugh. "I assure you Abdullah is nothing to me. I did not go to his house to see Abdullah." Then she could have bitten her tongue, for this would not win past his quick comprehension.
"Ah, there was some other in Abdullah's house! It amounts to the same. Someone mixed in the shenanigan."
Paul Dare's body leaned forward suddenly. Somebody in Abdullah's house! Instantly he knew. It was that man, the man of the steamship, of Damascus, of the automobile and the scene of the killing! . . . So this was why she had come to Nazareth, as the part of some plot, as a member of what he had heard referred to as a "mob," an association of criminals bent upon some criminal purpose. And he to whom there had been neither right or wrong, to whom all human acts were colorless and without moral significance, was revolted. Thus far had he traveled from academic cloisters.
Again Rhoda knew that unease of spirit, that tumult of soul, as she was dragged and hauled and jostled between two alternatives. On the one hand stood the law and what the law stood for; on the other hand stood the forces arrayed against the law. Both called upon her to join hands with them—and she alone could decide which force should carry her banner. . . . It was the old thought, the old fear that she was predestined! The thing the world had sought to fasten upon her —that she was her mother's daughter, of her mother's blood, and that inescapable laws compelled her to a certain course. . . . And then there was Jaunty Bailey. Did she love him? If she loved him, was her love warrant for accepting the life he offered. . . . It must be remembered that she had lived with crime as a commonplace; she was not normal, her outlook upon life was irregular, distorted. . . . So now, knowing that some dreadful thing impended, knowing whose hand was raised to perpetrate it, she sat between two duties opposed as the poles, and dared embrace neither. It seemed right that she should warn Hana Effendi of this prepared crime. It seemed utterly wrong and damnable that she should betray the man who loved her. Be it remembered that loyalty was the one quality she had been taught to admire above all others! . . . It was a dreadful dilemma, but it could admit of only one solution to such as she; she could never turn traitor. She could never give up a pal to the police!
"Miss Fair!" Hana Effendi spoke almost in a whisper now, and she could see that there was no humor in his eyes, no jollity, no friendship, but something Eastern, unfathomable, cold and aloof. "Miss Fair, watch your step." His eyes changed, remaining Eastern but not inscrutable, and she was compelled to remember that he was not a man such as she had known, familiar with the ideals and chivalry of the West, valuing women as an Oriental values them and not as a man of Anglo-Saxon lineage. . . . In his eyes she read an appreciation of her beauty, a readiness to avail himself of opportunity coldly and with calculation. It did not anger her, for she was wise enough to perceive that he was but being himself, was untrue to no standard of his own. He moved a little way from her and then spoke again. "My business is to be a policeman. It does not make some difference how amusing the criminals are when I watch them—nor how beautiful. Keep out of the way of the steam roller."
She was shaken, frightened. Somehow she knew the man, whatever his private friendships, whatever his desires, however companionable he might be in his leisure, could be inexorable, as little to be swerved from his purpose as kismet itself. To his warning Rhoda made no direct response.
"Such a day! . . . Such a night! . . . Oh, I'm so tired, so tired."
"Then I go," he said in his accustomed, jovial voice. "I hope for you the good sleep. Do you come, Mr. Dare? You excuse, but I think Miss Fair wish to be alone."
Dare arose, hesitated. "Go ahead, Mr. Hana," he said. "I —I will follow in a moment. There is something I must say to Miss Fair."
"Tomorrow," said Rhoda.
"Tonight. . . . Now!" said Paul Dare; and looking at his set face, the handsomeness of it, the brown leanness, the determined line of his jaw, she knew he would have his way—knew it with apprehension.
"Very well," she said, wearily, and gave her hand to Hana Effendi. "Good night. . . "
Chapter Sixteen
RHODA knew it was to be an ordeal, something to tear at her emotions again, and she braced herself to meet it. She felt the unfairness of it, the cruelty of events that should beat upon her in waves, one after the other, as they did tonight. Each, she saw, was someone else's selfish wave—and yet, were they-altogether selfish? Hana Effendi at least had thought of her perhaps more than of himself. . . .
Paul Dare continued to stand stiff, motionless, inarticulate.
"I'm so tired," said Rhoda, but in his eyes was no pity, no response to this appeal. He was engrossed, could see nothing, think of nothing but himself and the tumult so furious within him.
Then he spoke, in a metallic, driven voice. His eyes glowed, his face which years of habit had schooled to a sort of supercilious immobility was tortured, for he had come to the parting of the ways, to the moment when all the ideals of his life must be wrecked, abolished. Yet, in the beginning, he spoke pedantically, with something of the schoolroom.
"I have to tell you," he said, "that I love you. It is not infatuation nor any lesser emotion." It was apparent that he resented it. "There can be no doubt. I know." Here his voice broke, his restraint faltered. "I— You— My God! I didn't know such a thing could be—such a feeling! . . . I'm wracked with it, torn with it. Can't you see—can't you see what it is doing to me? . . . I thought I knew a great deal." Here for a moment his voice became almost humble. "But if I was wrong in this great thing, I was wrong in everything—a fool, a futile fool!" This, indeed, was a strange declaration of love, not pleasant to hear—words twitching from a soul in torture.
"I love you," he commenced again. "And you—I do not need to be told you do not love me. But you must. You must!" Then, despairingly, "How could any woman love me! I'm not a man as manhood is understood in this world. What is there to love in me? I know, but I do not know how to remedy it. Always it has been my pride that I was myself, individual, not like the farmer and the policeman and the merchant and the laborer. . . . But now I want to be like them. I want to be a man—as other men are men—and I don't know how. It's this love makes me want to be so—this ghastly necessity. For you arc a necessity to me. I know that now. I've never been afraid, but I am afraid now—afraid to think of living without you."
Rhoda's heart, troubled and aching as it was, went out in pity to him; she saw the dreadfulness of it, how it tortured him to make this confession, how it must have tortured him to come to the realization of his barrenness.
"Don't go on. . . . Don't go on," she said in a low, protesting voice.
"I must go on. I've got to tell you. No, it is not pleasant for me—and the story-books said this love was a joy! It's a torment, it's a white fire—but it must be worth the burning because it makes light to see the truth. . . . It has showed me myself, has showed me life and living. . . . I have never lived. I've been a brain functioning in dust, and now the dust has come alive. . . . They threw me out, and I thought I was a martyr to truth. I was a fool, worse than a fool, deceiving myself with vanity. . . . And now it is all gone. All swept away, and I am at the beginning. I know nothing, and I cannot trust my
self, have lost confidence in myself. Can you understand what that means? I cannot separate the true from the false, recognize what is real from what is unreal. At this moment the one thing in all the vast, whirling desert of knowledge which is mine surely is that I love you."
"You—Mr. Dare, you mustn't speak so! You mustn't think this. . . . Oh go. . . . I am so tired. . . . Go and sleep, and, if you must, come again tomorrow. You are not yourself."
"I have never been myself before," he said, scornfully. "Always I have been a thing of rattling dry bones which was nobody, nothing. . . . I hope you never come to despise yourself." Of a sudden self-possession returned to him, and a gentleness very foreign to his nature as she had known it. "I am sorry. I am hurting you, and I would not hurt you. I make it appear that I lay fault at your door. It is not so. This had to come, it was inevitable. Somewhere, some day, by some event, my eyes must have been opened. . . . I wish there was a God," he said in a whisper, "for I can understand how the deluded find comfort in prayer. . . . I ask nothing, for I know it would be refused, and rightly. But it was necessary for me to tell you—to tell you that I do not care to live without you. This is the truth, and not futile exaggeration. . . . I have nothing to offer you, nothing with which to win your regard or your love. . . . But such is my feeling for you that—and this is amazingly unlike me—I would go with something very like joy to be tortured in your behalf. . . . I think that is all, except, that I should like to say that your antecedents and your actions do not weigh with me. I want you as you are. . . . God knows I'm a poor creature to offer protection—but I want to protect you. I want to fight for you." It was a new thought to him and he paused over it an instant. "To fight for you," he repeated, and through the mist of her emotions and her weariness her eyes showed him to her as more human, as very human, indeed—and something of a man. It would have comforted him could he have known this.
"And so," he said, "good night. . . . I—there must be a sure, safe beginning to start from. I shall seek it. . . . There must be a road which men travel to become men. My effort shall be to find it. . . . And when—or if—I find it then I shall come to you again." His voice became edged, vibrant. "What a futile thing I have been!"
RHODA FAIR: The Classic Novel of a Woman at the Crossroads Page 15
