Also, and characteristically, he cultivated the acquaintance of Reuben Friend, and presently became very fond of the gentle old man who endured his tribulation so philosophically. This, too, was characteristic. Jaunty always had the faculty of separating the man from the event; where he sometimes erred was in attributing a like faculty to people who did not possess it.
"Now, Mr. Friend," he began one of their earliest conversations, "you and I are going to see quite some of each other for a while, and I hope we'll get along."
"But," expostulated Reuben, "why am I brought here, and my wife. She is alarmed. I do not like to have her alarmed. . . . We have done no wrong to anyone. . . "
"Of course not," said Jaunty. "It's a straight matter of business." He smiled in that likable way he had. "And, after all, you were lucky. Somebody else might have picked you off. You were made for it, you know. Made to order. Yes, sir, so long as you had to be kidnapped, it's lucky I took on the job."
Reuben Friend could smile. "It is difficult to see good fortune in this matter anywhere.. . . Mamma worries so. Not for herself, you understand, but she fears this is not good for my rheumatism. . . . And she's so careful about what I eat."
"We'll keep you warm and dry, and you shan't go hungry till the sheik's last sheep is slaughtered. . . . But now, suppose I hadn't fallen in with Abdullah in New York and taken this thing on! You'd have been in a pickle now, wouldn't you? Honest, he's a mean little rat—streak of cruelty in him."
"But what am I to expect. What is to be the outcome of this?"
"Simple as A B C," said Jaunty in his debonair way. Then he laughed, "Do you know, all these policeman with towels on their heads are skitting around across the river, looking for you. And here you are where you can almost yell loud enough to be heard in Nazareth. . . . Abdullah never would have thought of that! . . . Oh yes, the main idea. Ransom, of course. The minute it is paid you'll be turned over as good as new—and with something to write home about."
"But, young man, that sort of thing is obsolete. It can't be done any more. Besides, this is British territory."
"Obsolete? Maybe, but I'm giving it a first-class revival. With trimmings. None of the old rough stuff, like sending in an ear or a finger as a sample. That would be Abdullah's way."
"And how much are you asking for me?" Reuben Friend asked, gently.
"I was thinking of twenty thousand pounds—Egyptian. Good money and stable. You're worth it," he said, critically. "Mighty poor compliment to you if I asked less. You can spare it, too."
"Yes, I can spare it," said Reuben, "but I can ill spare it from other uses. A hundred thousand dollars! That sum would do much for this poor country—for my people, the poor and despised of the earth."
"It'll do a lot for me," said Jaunty.
"But how will you enjoy it? Suppose you get it, young man, do you imagine you will be let to spend it in comfort? I fear you have piled up trouble for yourself."
"Now you don't think I've gone into this without looking for a safe out, do you? Who knows I'm in it besides yourself, and your word is good. You're going to promise me you'll never remember a thing about me."
"But suppose you're caught?"
"I won't be. I got my education where you have to learn to think three times before the other fellow thinks once. . . . And these Arab policemen don't think at all."
"But the British. They're a stubborn race."
"By the time they're starting in to get stubborn, you'll be on your way and I'll be on mine."
"But suppose—just suppose the ransom is not forthcoming. What if I—and I am a Jew you know"—his old eyes twinkled—"what if I refuse to pay. Then what becomes of me?"
"Naturally I've thought of that," said Jaunty, "and it is the defect in my scheme. Abdullah would take out his disappointment on you—and he'd get a full twenty thousand pounds' worth. But I couldn't. . . . Nope. In the end I'd just have to turn you loose and settle somehow with my friends here. And that would be embarrassing."
"What will you do with the money? Is it your intention to give over this life—this criminal way of living—and settle down upon your gains to a solid respectability?"
"Me settle down! . . . And then you can never tell. Others have—but with me it isn't so much the money as it is the fun."
"Is it such fun—this excitement and risk?"
"It's more than that, Mr. Friend. It's the breath of life to me; it is food and drink. Can you see me clerking in a store or keeping somebody's books! Oh no. There used to be a time when a fellow didn't have to go in for crime to keep his blood circulating—but what is there now? . . . And so far as the moral aspects are concerned, why, there aren't much of any that I can see."
Reuben Friend nodded, "Though I've led a sedentary and uneventful life," he said, "I fancy I understand what you mean—and strange as it may sound, I can sympathize with you. . . . After all, your trouble, my friend, is that you haven't grown up thoroughly. You're a boy playing games—but they're dangerous games."
"We pretended the danger when we were boys," said Jaunty. "When we grow up we haven't the imagination. The danger must be actual."
"And the morals. . . . The longer I live the less I seem to know about them, about what is good and what is evil, and the varying degrees of it. There are crimes which are crimes by the nature of them, and crimes which are so by agreement—artificial crimes, as you may say."
"Now that's right interesting," said Jaunty. "Go on. I never thought about it just that way. Where do you draw the line?"
"There lies the difficulty, and perhaps the differentiation lies more in the results of the act than in the act itself. As I see it crimes must fall under one of three heads—crimes against the soul, crimes against the body, and crimes against property. The second we need not discuss. Our lives and our bodies are precious to us. But the other two. . . . I grow more convinced that the only sins with which Heaven concerns itself are sins against the soul. Why should God be exercised if I take ten dollars from your pocket and put it into mine? Yet he may be. . . . I think his concern there would be the injury I did to my own soul. . . . But I may be wrong. I am accused of a too great tolerance."
"Do you know," said Jaunty, "I like you. I'm glad you fell to me and not to somebody who would have treated you roughly."
Reuben Friend smiled at this rather distorted view of the matter, but Jaunty was serious. "But," said the old man, "you don't like me well enough to escort me into Nazareth?"
"I always keep business and pleasure separated," Jaunty said, with a twinkle in his black eyes. And that was the conversation of the first day. It was the next morning upon which Reuben Friend suddenly asked: "And what will become of you eventually? What will your life be? How, if you cling to this trade of yours, can you ever know the fine things to which every man is entitled?"
"Such as?" asked Jaunty.
"Love," said Reuben, "and the fidelity and sacrifices of a wife, and children and the worship of children."
Jaunty puckered his brows. "I'd never thought as far as the children," he said, "but what's to prevent the rest. Do you think all of us on the wrong side of the law are celibates? Most of us, Mr. Friend, are like other folks. We can love; we do love and marry."
"And rear children to your own calling?"
"It's my experience that no father wants his children to follow his own profession. . . . But why, now? I'd hate to see a son of mine a pickpocket or a porch-climber—but he wouldn't be."
"Every child who starts to draw cannot be a great artist," said Reuben. "Some of them must end up making pictures with colored chalks on the sidewalks of Florence. . . . Um. . . . The lot of a child of criminal parents is not to be envied. . . . I have just met one such, and traveled with her, and came to love her—and my heart bled for her. A sweet girl, a fine girl—who might become a splendid woman. . . . But who knows?"
"Met her? Where? Who do you mean, Mr. Friend?"
"Should I mention her name? She seemed already to be in difficulties—a matter o
f stolen jewels. I did not inquire into it."
"You mean Rhoda Fair?"
"You know her, then? And with her story before your eyes—"
"I am a part of her story," said Jaunty. "You were talking of love and marriage. Her mother and father loved and married and were happy. . . ."
"And you," said Reuben, his keen old eyes scrutinizing Jaunty's changing expression, "are a part of the problem of the daughter. Is it not so. . . . Um. . . . Those jewels! Perhaps you are the accomplice spoken of in the papers."
"And if I am?"
"Then, young man, you stand upon the threshold of a great guilt. That girl, if it was given me to read her rightly, is battling valiantly for her soul. . . . She is poised, not able to see which way she must fly. . . . Whether it shall be upward or downward. Let me warn you." His face became grave, his sorrowful eyes stern, "Let me warn you that God will not hold you guiltless if you, by the weight of so much as a feather, influence her toward evil."
"But I love her," Jaunty said, fiercely. "She is mine. I believe she loves me. . . "
"And you would marry her?"
"Yes, and be as true and as loving a husband as any grocer's clerk or druggist."
"Making her take on your color! Dragging her down to you! Killing the fineness, the sweetness, the nobility in her! Turning her into a hunted thing, to sink and to sink into what squalor and misery and evil you do not know. . . . Do you dare to do that, young man? Have you that rashness? Dare you so affront God?"
"If she comes to me she must live my life. And I am not afraid of your God. . . . She will live. What other woman will have a life like hers! Together we—but you would not understand, I'm afraid."
"I would not understand," said Reuben Friend. He arose and walked away, but presently he returned. "Young man, in the long hours of the night, think. Consider what you would do."
"I love her," said Jaunty.
"It were better," said Reuben Friend, sternly, "that you hated her with the most bitter hatred. . . . That, even in the sight of Heaven, might be some condonation of your crime; might fetch some amelioration of your punishment."
Chapter Twenty
THE motives which drive any individual to extraordinary action are complex, confused, and it is difficult to say that this or that was the one to change inertia into movement. Defects may drive as well as virtues, and the effects may be identical—which is a thing not to be contemplated without irony. So it was with Rhoda Fair. She was about to embark upon a hazardous enterprise; emotions, yearnings, reachings out into the blackness of uncertainty, a certain fortitude—and a burning hunger for adventure—all these combined to put her in readiness, and who shall say which cause was indispensable to the result. It is true that she did not look to causes, did not reason about it nor indulge in introspection. For the time she was all objective, all obedience to what seemed a necessity. But, had she been other than she was, the very thought of such an attempt should not have occurred to her. There was first necessary the basis of fearlessness, of reckless unease, of hot young blood demanding its day. To your normal girl the thing would have been unthinkable; to a girl less fine, less sturdy of spirit, it would have been appalling; to one with a degree scantier equipment of splendid womanhood—which means the capacity to suffer and to sacrifice for a love or an ideal—the peril to happiness would have held in manacles of unyielding steel.
But Rhoda Fair! It seemed she was constructed by nature, by environment, by antecedents, for some such moment as this. It was foreordained. If this particular adventure did not come to her, some other of like nature if different form was inevitable of appearance. It was essential to her formation, to her perfection or her damnation—and after all a thing irrevocably damned is perfect in its dreadful way. It was not in her to be of the level of the mediocre good, or of the listless evil; for her could be only a soaring to the heights or a plunge to the depths. . . .
So she made ready for her venture—and with something of happiness. This was not strange. For days and weeks and months she had been miserable. The springs of impish humor which used to flow so delightfully had been choked; she had suffered from the chafing of inaction and indecision. Action, any action and movement which busied her mind and her body was welcome; whatever the outcome, it was sure to bring a measure of relief and pleasure. . . . But it was more than this in a subtle fashion. She felt she had come to the moment of the casting of the die; that out of what lay immediately before her would come the fulfillment she sought so pitifully. And she was content. . . .
Now she felt something of the old flow of life; it quickened in her veins, brightened in her eyes. That night she slept.
In the morning Saffoury was there waiting for her, self-possessed, dignified yet casting sidewise diffident glances with his fine brown eyes as if to ask if his presence were welcome. He asked no questions.
"Mr. Ghafir sent you?"
"Yes, my young lady."
"Do you know where we are to go?"
"He say you will make it plain to me."
"You know about the man who was stolen away by robbers?"
"The richly American—that old man who is giving greatly sums to this country. All know of that."
"We are going to seek him."
"It will be a difficult thing to do, and hardships not fit for young lady."
"Those things do not matter. Are you willing to go with me and to help me?"
"He said it was for me to be going."
"And have you any idea where we should look; how we should go about the search?"
"It is said by all they go across the Jordan, my young lady. There are many robbers there."
"Saffoury, this is a very important thing to me. Have you any knowledge that will help me; have you heard anything among the people—who the robbers might be, or where to look for them?"
"I am not knowing robbers," he said in his diffident, dignified way. "I am substantial citizen, though poor by reason of the war. Travelers who come to this country would not employ me as dragoman if it were known that I have acquainted with robbers."
"Tell me, if I had asked you to go with me on this business, would you have gone?"
"No, my young lady."
"But you go because Mr. Ghafir asks you."
"What he asks, must be done by anybody."
"Why?"
He smiled, as he rarely did. "If I am ignorant Arab like these Mohammedans, and superstitiously, then I am telling you maybe he is a jinn. Or otherwise maybe he is having power to control the jinni as King Solyman who built the great temple was always doing. But I am Christian, and not at all superstitiously."
"You believe Mr. Friend and his wife have been carried into Trans-Jordania?"
"It is the talk of the bazaars."
"There was a plain trail leading across the river—from the spot where they were captured—was there not?"
"Very plain for all to see, and many persons saw the robbers as they fled."
"But did they see Mr. Friend?"
"It was said that there were prisoners."
Rhoda nodded her head. She was convinced, convinced that her own theory was the true one, and that Trans-Jordania would be a barren hunting-ground. It is true she had more data from which to reach a conclusion than had Hana Effendi; she knew Jaunty Bailey. Knowing him and the caliber of the man, she was able to follow in a measure his mental processes and guess his strategy. Other basis she had for reasoning, and this was her knowledge of the resource and methods of American criminals of superior class. She was confident of two things: that the police believed the crime to have been committed by Arabs and after the style of Arab outlaws, and that, therefore, it had not been committed in any such manner; that there was a plain, advertised trail leading across the Jordan and that, therefore, Reuben Friend had not been taken into Trans-Jordania at all. Also, she was familiar with Jaunty's recklessness, his venturesomeness, and reached an unshakable conclusion that he had fled scarcely at all. It would not have surprised her to find him in Naza
reth himself, in that very house where he had sheltered with Abdullah. For, naturally, Hana Effendi would consider that the last place under heaven to look for his quarry. Jaunty loved a coup de théâtre; it was not in him to do anything in other than a seemingly hair-brained, but actually efficient and well-thought-out manner. He was a madcap, but an astute, far-seeing madcap.
"Mr. Friend is not across the Jordan," she said, emphatically.
"But yes, my young lady."
"But no. He is near. It may even be that he is in Nazareth. The most unlikely place to look for him is the place where he is to be found. He is almost within sound of our voices."
"Oh, that is not at all possibly." Saffoury had a quaint way of ending as many words adverbially as he could see his way clear to. People were "richly," a horse ran "fastly." After all, English is not the simplest language to a foreigner.
"I know," said Rhoda. "We will first go to the spot where Mr. Friend's car was attacked. At this moment he is within ten miles of it. There cannot be many roads. . . . Let me think. Let me think. . . . If I were planning this thing, how would I do? How would my mother have done?"
There was Abdullah to consider as well as Jaunty. He had been brought along for a purpose. What was that purpose? What need would a resourceful man like Jaunty Bailey have of a slinking little Oriental such as the man she had seen? . . .
Obviously to provide the native assistants necessary, to interpret, to show the country, to attend to matters of baksheesh necessary to the enlisting of allies. . . .
"Does my young lady wish to take horses or an automobeel?" asked Saffoury.
"A car, I think. It will be faster." She was thinking of Paul Dare and of the need to be before him.
"But the driver," said Saffoury. "This matter is privately and not to be talked about. A driver—even after much baksheesh he will talk in the bazaar."
"Hire a car," Rhoda said, "and I will drive."
Saffoury shook his head dubiously, but obeyed. And so after a trifling delay, caused by the obduracy of the car owner, who was reluctant to intrust his property to the care of a young woman, they took the road. It was to be a long road, perilous and obstructed by heartaches and tribulations, but it was not given Rhoda to peer into the future. As they passed Mary's Well there was nothing to tell her she would not see it again; nothing to tell her that hardship must intervene, travail of spirit, death, and agony in a garden, before the end of the journey came into view. . . .
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