"No," she cried for she felt she must comfort him, must say some word to assuage his suffering, "not futile. A wrong commencement, maybe—a mistake—"
"The world contains nothing more dreadful than a mistake like mine. I would give all I possess to change places with Hana Effendi—he is a man!—or with the man Bailey—even with this creature Abdullah!"
"You must not say such things."
"They're true. . . ." He snatched his hat and strode to the door. "If only I knew the way," he said, and before she could rise he was gone.
Rhoda covered her face with her hands and wept. Not tears of weakness, for she had risen above her weakness, but womanly tears of sympathy. The night had been dreadful to her with its demands, its playing upon her emotions, but her griefs and fears and doubts and travail seemed as nothing to Paul Dare's. His was a crisis of torture, of self-revelation. He had drunk a draught so bitter that the taste of it might never leave his mouth; he despised himself, and she could understand the horror of that. Whatever she suffered was nothing to that, for, whatever her problems, whatever clutched her with tearing fingers, she owned self-respect. She was not ashamed. She was herself, accepted herself open-eyed and with fortitude, and whatever road she chose would be of her own choosing—to be followed without fear and without regret. . . . But there was nothing she could tell him, nothing she could say to him to give him ease. That he had been closer to winning her admiration in that hour of his confession was true; that in his agony of spirit he had seemed more of a man than ever before, was a fact—but she could not tell him. It would have sounded in his ears as specious attempt to comfort. Far better it was to keep silence while he sought the way, struggling through the murk of his debacle to the secure footing of the road whose existence he realized.
Paul Dare, as he paused for a moment outside the house of Josef, stood closer than ever before in his life he had stood to humanity. Impulses moved him—impulses strange to him but common to normal men. Strangest of these demands was one that he should prove himself a man in the sense that Jaunty Bailey and Hana Effendi were men—to both of whom he had all along believed himself to be immensely superior. Now he perceived that they possessed something he lacked, something not intellectual, something not of the mind at all. It was a great advance for him to be able to comprehend that anything not originating in the intellect could be admirable. . . . This flowed from his humiliation that he, Paul Dare, had failed in his chosen field; that the world set value on attributes other than those which he had deemed to possess the exclusive right to admiration. . . . Also he loved. Perhaps this was most powerful of all to open his eyes, because love is primitive, not a thing of reason and culture, but which acts in identical way with the most learned and the most ignorant. . . . In short, he desired to elevate himself in the eyes of his beloved! But there was something finer than that: he desired to protect his beloved, to shield her, to stand between her and danger or grief. In this he was most unlike the Paul Dare of a few days before. He wanted to serve her! . . .
As he reflected he brought to bear one fact unknown to Hana Effendi, and this fact was the existence of Jaunty Bailey. He needed not to be told that Rhoda had gone to the house of Abdullah at the behest of Bailey, and from this he read her implication in whatever scheme the American criminal had afoot. Because he wanted to believe it he arrived at the conviction that Rhoda was compelled to participation. . . . And here another emotion, new to his experience, stepped in. He was jealous. Not that it would have required jealousy to make enemies of himself and Bailey, for they were natural enemies, set against each other by something bigger than themselves.
Paul Dare lacked an object in life, had lacked one until that hour. Now he lacked one no longer, for new emotions, new desires, the dawn of a new outlook, forced a purpose upon him; love, humiliation, protest, demanded something of him. A curious new thing which he was incapable of recognizing, but which was tenderness toward Rhoda, urged him. . . . So that he saw clearly that he must interfere, must meddle, must throw himself into the dark swirl of events and become a wholly new creature—a man of action. He put the thing into words.
"I've got to extricate Rhoda from this mess," he said in his mind.
Now it was curious that a man who had never made a physical decision of any great importance should have been able to act with decision and without delay; that he should have been gifted or cursed with a certain rashness. But in his state of mind, his wretched, restless state, he hungered for action—and he acted. With no clear plan, but with a very definite intention, he set off through the dark and devious streets for the house of Abdullah the Levantine. His purpose was to commence at the spider as a center and to explore and to destroy the web.
Walking softly, keeping to the shadows, he reached the door of the house and there he paused, not to formulate a plan, for there was in his possession no data from which a scheme of action could be molded. With his ear to the wood, he listened. Stealthily he tried the latch; the door swung inward upon a cave of darkness, and it required no inconsiderable courage to overcome the dread of that unknown, mysterious gulf. With infinite pains he closed the door behind him and stood immobile, scarcely breathing, listening. It seemed the blackness was a trifle less black further along, as if some almost imperceptible glow filtered through to make the impenetrable blackness seem less solid. Reaching out his hand, he felt the cold, hard surface of the wall, and using this as his guide he moved an inch at a time toward the rear of the house. . . . Now that he was there, now that his rashness had caused him to enter the house, he asked himself why he was there, and it was almost with amusement that he told himself it was the same old quest—altered, renovated, changed in character but basically the same —he was searching for facts, hunting for the truth.
Presently he was able to assure himself that the suggestion of a glow penetrated a heavy hanging close by the rear of the cavernous hall, for his hand left the solid wall to encounter yielding fabric. He halted, crouched, listened. . . . There was silence for a time, broken at last by a rustling and creaking as of someone moving in a chair; a clearing of a throat; at last a voice, low-pitched and scarcely carrying to his ear.
"Time to be getting out of this."
"Not yet."
"You're what the Scotch would call a wee cowerin' beastie, Abdullah. . . . Well, I'll humor you another ten minutes. . . . You don't mind my saying I'm sick of your infernal country."
"You have not to be seek so mooch longer."
"If your information's right, he gets to Tiberias tomorrow. If I'm any judge of towns, there's nothing to hold him there. Personally I could look at that town while I count ten and see enough of it to give me my money's worth."
"He come for Nazareth on day after tomorrow."
"Maybe."
"I say he come."
"We'll have to get your gang to the spot in the night and plant 'em. . . . I'm not so fond of working with these wild men. Can't tell what they're loaded with. . . . You'll be surprised to hear it, but there are times when I have my suspicions of you."
"Oh, sair! I am on levels."
"You will be so long as I keep my eyesight and my health. . . . Day after tomorrow. It's certain he'll take the road through Cana of Galilee?"
"It is so."
Jaunty chuckled. "Well, he just barely won't get there. Think of that! The disappointment of it—to get almost in sight of a fine, flourishing, up-to-date metropolis like Cana, and then never see it. . . . But we'll give him amusements to make up for it. . . . Ten minutes up, and I'm going. . . . Douse the light. We can feel our way out."
Swiftly Paul Dare stepped across the door and stood with his back against the rear wall of the house; almost simultaneously with his movement the curtain was thrust aside and two dark forms fumbled their way toward the front, opened it, and disappeared into the street. Paul followed. . . . As he emerged, Jaunty and Abdullah were swinging around an angle a hundred yards away. . . . Paul kept to the shadows and dogged their steps.
He
had learned much and little. A man was to arrive in Tiberias tomorrow, was to start for Nazareth the next day. He was to advance almost to Cana of Galilee, but was not to see it. That was the sum total, but it was enough from which to construct a fabric of conjecture. A crime was about to be committed; Rhoda was implicated—and she must be saved. . . . It seemed clear the way to do so was to prevent the act, whatever it was, and to prevent it by himself. He could summon no help, give no information to the police, for that would be as dangerous to Rhoda as to Bailey and his other accomplices. No. What was to be done must be accomplished by him and by him alone. . . .
What rather complicated matters was that Hana Effendi's instinct as a policeman had led him to return to Abdullah's house to watch who should emerge from it. He saw Paul Dare enter as one expected; saw Jaunty and Abdullah come out, followed presently by Dare. From that moment matters clarified for him. He was sure of his ground. These strangers with whom he had become so friendly were all together, confederated, with Abdullah and this new, unknown individual who had come out with Abdullah. Rhoda Fair and Paul were trying to pull wool over his eyes. He shrugged his shoulders. It is true he liked them—but in a matter of business—well, what happened would have to happen. Appearances assuredly gave adequate basis for his assumptions. . . . Once matters came to a head, he could be inexorable, merciless; in the meantime he would make the most of their pleasant society.
For a day and night Paul Dare avoided Rhoda and Hana Effendi. During that time he gave much thought to the formation of an adequate mode of procedure, but in the end it came to seem very simple to him. It was really no plan at all, but straightforward action; he would simply be upon the road beyond Cana of Galilee on the appointed day and frustrate Jaunty Bailey's ambuscade by warning its victim. This seemed simple; no real difficulties presented themselves, and he rested content.
As for Rhoda, her perplexities were multiplied by a note received through mysterious channels from Jaunty Bailey.
"My dear," it said, "I'm depending on you. Everything hinges on you. And it's such a little thing to do. Tomorrow that policeman friend of yours mustn't be running around loose. Call him to heel and keep him there. It will give him a pleasant day and keep him out of mischief. Remember, I'm depending on you for this." That was all, but it was enough, piled upon all that had gone before, to drive Rhoda close to the verge of despair. . . . If she refused, disaster might visit Jaunty, and she could not bear the thought of that; if she acceded, she became his accessory, chargeable with his guilt. . . . And she was alarmed, for, now that the event was imminent, now that the forces of the law and the forces of anti-law were about to meet in combat, she was curiously thrilled, curiously eager to play a part. The game called to her; adventure lured her; she hungered for it, craved it as some addict deprived of his solace might crave a drug. . . .
Chapter Seventeen
THE road from Nazareth to Cana of Galilee is not one from which the most footless traveler can stray. It is hard, broad, well defined, so that Paul Dare felt no hesitation in essaying the intervening few miles even by starlight. He chose to walk because by so doing he could simply disappear from the town without the flurry and chattering and innumerable orders necessary to the saddling and bringing to the hotel of his donkey. He was unarmed. Had he elected to carry firearms, he would not have known how to go about it to procure them—though knives were easy to come by. The project seemed so simple to him that he experienced no anxiety as to its success; it really was nothing of an adventure—in it was nothing heroic. At most it required of him a walk of something like five miles and patience to sit by the roadside until a traveler should appear. Vaguely he wished there were obstacles in the way, difficulties to overcome. . . . Absurd as it may seem, he was suffering mildly from the bite of the pretty insect of romance—and even the most trifling symptom of this disease was so revolutionary a thing for him as to be almost cataclysmic. Perhaps it is fortunate he did not know what ailed him.
He trudged along briskly, exhilarated by the heights, the pale light of the myriad stars, the chill of the spring air. His enjoyment was essentially physical, for, strange to say, his mind was singularly content. During that journey he scarcely thought, but merely existed and enjoyed.
The road winds, climbs, dips, clings precariously, or ambles comfortably through tiny valleys. Rocks tower above, olive trees cluster darkly below; now and then a habitation, infrequently a blot of black which is the tent of a Bedouin; tiny villages of stone or stucco with walled gardens compelled the road to turn and twist in its passage. But nowhere a sign of human life; the countryside was asleep. His only fear was lest he mistake Cana, but, even in the darkness, he hoped to be able to recognize the olive mill at the right just as one enters the village—that olive mill which had not turned its wheels since the Germans destroyed the gasoline motor which drove it. . . . He did not press forward rapidly, but rather dawdled along the way, so that it was nearer to two o'clock than one when he dipped into the valley whose slopes bore the low buildings of Cana. In the starlight it looked like a ruin rather than a village.
Now his problem was how far beyond the village he should station himself, but at last, perhaps a mile along, he seated himself upon a rock to review the situation. Then it was that he saw himself as something humorous—this young man who always had regarded himself so seriously. True, it was a saturnine humor, but to be able to perceive anything absurd in his own conduct was a marked advance toward humanity. He smiled sardonically at the thought that he, an individualist and egoist, should be behaving as he now behaved; should be sitting on a cold, uncomfortable rock for another's benefit. Here he was, out of his bed, possibly to run a considerable risk —and all to save some unidentified person from misfortune. It was altruism. He, Paul Dare, was being guilty of an altruistic act—he who did not care a snap of the finger what became of humanity so long as he himself were left undisturbed to pursue truth. . . . But was it altruism, after all? That honesty of mind which was so characteristic of him compelled the question. Why really was he there? His sardonic smile came again, for he had been crediting himself with a desire to aid another when that desire did not exist. He really cared not a whit what became of this stranger; no; his purpose in coming to that spot was to protect Rhoda Fair from the consequences of her own conduct; to prevent a crime which would precipitate dreadful things upon her. . . . Well, that was altruism. He was doing it for her—because he loved her. . . . But was he? He searched his heart, and as he searched it became clearer that even this might not be his predominant motive—for his motives were mixed. It seemed to him that he was not there so much to aid any individual as to frustrate one. The purpose was not to help, but to hinder. Acute dislike of Jaunty Bailey was more powerful to move him than love of Rhoda. . . . He wondered if this were so, and why. Was it possible he was more interested to put a stumbling-block in the way of this American criminal, whose path seemed to cross his own so frequently, than he was to protect the woman he loved? . . . He shrugged his shoulders. Why not?
From that point he passed into a consideration of altruism in the abstract, and of its absurdities. It was absurd. He insisted upon it. It was utterly ridiculous for any human being to step aside from his own concerns, to risk anything, to suffer anything, in order to benefit another. To what end? . . .
Presently the sound of hoofs upon the hard road caused him to withdraw from his conspicuous station and to conceal himself in the shadow of the rocks. It was only a nocturnal party of Bedouins, eight of them he counted, riding leisurely. He followed them with his eyes uninterestedly—until he saw them stop and huddle together some hundred yards beyond him; saw them dismount and lead their horses from the road and disappear in the blackness of the olive grove. Curious conduct, he considered, but, not cognizant of the customs and business of these nomads, he attached small importance to it in the beginning. Yet it bore all the earmarks of an ambuscade! . . . What then? The more he considered the clearer became the situation. This was his ambuscade! This was the
spot.
These Bedouins were allies of Jaunty Bailey and Abdullah and Rhoda Fair, and what more natural? The crime, whatever it was to be, was to be given the appearance of a depredation by nomadic outlaws of Trans-Jordania, by horsemen of the desert! . . . Well, they had gotten between him and Tiberias and he would have to find a way around them to intercept the expected travelers.
He arose and made his stealthy way up the mountain side, swinging to the left above the concealing olive trees, and then bent downward to the road again. A couple of hundred yards along he paused and again concealed himself against the coming of morning. Dawn was long in coming, and it is possible he slept intermittently; slept to be awakened at brief intervals by the clamorous barking of many dogs. . . . He opened his eyes at last to full daylight and found himself to be upon a shoulder of the hill about which the road curved sharply. Across the highway the hillside continued downward sharply, but upon a tiny flat-iron plateau squatted two long black tents. . . . So was explained the barking of dogs, for this was the temporary abiding place of Bedouin herdsmen.
There was scant movement of life; even the dogs were quiescent with the coming of daylight. Occasionally a robed figure made its way into one of the tents or emerged from the other. A couple of children played lethargically. . . . He speculated without great interest how human beings could live content in such squalor, and what it was that entitled them to live upon this planet. . . . It was best for him to remain concealed, he judged, so he sat close by the road, but screened from sight by a cluster of bowlders. . . . The playing children worked through the brambles nearer and nearer to the road-little boys they were, and presently he could see them clearly —and with repulsion. He judged the older to be not more than five years of age, but it was the smaller who caused his gorge to rise. The child was distorted, cruelly twisted of legs, and one of its eyes was absent. . . . Not surprising this in a land where one-eyed men are commonplace. . . . A repulsive thing, this child, unfit to live, a monstrosity! Why did it live? Why was it permitted to linger? What purpose had nature in preserving such a specimen of humanity? . . . How much better, how much kinder, how much more efficient, if nature had abolished this child at birth—would abolish it now!
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