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

by Clarence Budingtion Kelland

  Soon the mass of Jebel el-Tôr was to their right and they were heading southward. Another half hour or less and Rhoda, pointing to an inclement valley, hot, grown rank with briers, asked, briefly, "Bedouins?"

  "Yes, my young lady."

  "Do you know them?"

  "They are the tents of the Shiek El-Ssimairi. He is very richly man."

  "Rich? And lives in such a way!"

  "Flocks and herds," said Saffoury, "and also lands. He lives as his fathers lived before him."

  "Would he welcome visitors? I should like to ask him questions."

  "All Bedouins welcome visitors," said Saffoury. "It is the law of their religion. Also it will make him proud."

  "Then come," she said, stopping the car, but he arrested her.

  "First I will make a yell," he said. "It is because of the dogs." And, descending, he called loudly in Arabic. A man appeared, disappeared as swiftly into a tent, and there was a wait of minutes before other sign of life than the clamorous barking of many dogs made itself evident. Then three men, robed, carrying guns in their hands, appeared and moved toward the car. With these Saffoury carried on a brief colloquy.

  "I explain to them," said Saffoury over his shoulder, "that you are young lady tourist who wish to see Bedouin tents and how they are living. . . . Why do they meet guests with guns in their hands? I have not seen this before in times of peace."

  "Tell them I wish to speak to their sheik about an important matter," she said.

  The men seemed sullen; if the light in their eyes was one of hospitality, then Rhoda felt she was unacquainted with the usages of that virtue.

  "I do not understand," Saffoury said, uneasily. "They do not invite us to enter, according to custom, and they ask to be told what is this important affair."

  Other men now became visible, clustered about the central tent, among them a tall, imposing, bearded figure, so swarthy of skin as to be almost black; another, taller, joined him, and the pair stared at the car and its occupants; then the newcomer seemed to straighten with surprise, and in an instant, resolving into action, came bounding across the level patch of weeds and briers, heedless of dogs, heedless of narrow footpath, until he reached the dusty thoroughfare.

  "Rhoda," he exclaimed, thrusting back the headcloth from his face. "You have come to me? . . . . For a moment I couldn't believe my eyes." He laughed. "And you found me! I told you we could beat the world together. You nosed me out—my darling. And that took brains and darn intelligent guessing. . . . You've decided, you've made up your mind at last!"

  "I have made up my mind," she said. "Must we talk here in the road?"

  Jaunty Bailey turned to Saffoury. "I haven't the lingo," he said. "Please tell these seventh sons of seventh sons to go and make ready for the coming of a lady."

  "They ask," said Saffoury, after an exchange of words with the Bedouins, "if she is your wife."

  "You may tell them she mighty soon will be," said Jaunty. Then, turning to Rhoda, he seemed for the first time to recognize that there was something extraordinary about her coming; his face lost its boyish elation to become what it could be, a mask, with eyes of steel. "But wait," he said, "perhaps I go too fast. . . . Rhoda, how did you find me here? Why did you come?"

  "I did not know you were here," she said, simply, "but I guessed you were not far."

  "From what?"

  "There were too many things to lead Hana Effendi across the Jordan."

  "The policeman! Aren't you taking things for granted? Why should a policeman be looking for me?"

  "Why," she countered, "should you be hiding in a Bedouin's camp, disguised as an arab. . . . I know, Jaunty. I knew at once the thing had happned. Why, you—boasted of it to me."

  He nodded. "I did rather fancy the idea. . . . And naturally you would know. The question is" —his eyes became more steely than before, "does anybody else know? I've been rather reticent about showing myself in this vicinity."

  "Yet you did show yourself," she said. "The day the policeman was killed."

  "Um. . . ." He pursed his lips oddly and his jaw tightened. It was not a pleasant expression, nor one to convince the beholder of the basic gentleness of Jaunty's nature. "The professor fellow, I suppose, Always showing up. That young man and I are walking the wire in opposite directions; there's going to be a collision, and one of us gets a tumble."

  "I think," said Rhoda, "you would be making a foolish mistake to underrate him."

  He lifted his shoulders. "But to get back to ourselves. Why did you come looking for me?"

  "To ask something of you, Jaunty."

  "Will it be much of an argument?" he asked, with a return of good humor. "We'll go sit on the Shiek's cushions and drink coffee. . . . Here they come to drive off the dogs."

  They walked side by side to the central tent, Saffoury bringing up the rear, and there the dignified presentation to the Sheik El-Ssimairi was made, after which followed the customary formalities of coffee-drinking and decorous questions as to health. Presently, upon Saffoury's explaining that Bailey and Rhoda wished to be alone to discuss matters of importance, the Bedouins withdrew from earshot, but not from sight. Indeed, they kept elaborate watch, almost as if they were acting as guards. . . . Saffoury was not in comfortable frame of mind.

  "Now we can talk, my dear," said Jaunty. "We'll start with this: You came to me. . . . Why? Was it for the reason I hope it to be?"

  "Before I can answer that," said Rhoda, "I must know your answer to a thing I must ask you."

  "Can it depend upon an answer?" He laughed gayly. "Then the answer is made; it is whatever you want it to be."

  "Are you sure? It may not be so simple."

  "Anything in reason or out of reason. . . . If your love can hesitate for a word, mine is not that sort. . . . But tell me, did you have to come? Was it the game? Did it come to life in your blood? Did you have to be in it?"

  She shook her head. "The game. . . . I don't know about the game. That must come later."

  "After you have done as I ask you."

  "Then ask, my dear. Why be so long about it? Let's get it over with, for I'm tired waiting outside the gates."

  "Very well, Jaunty. I came to ask you to set free Mr. Friend and his wife."

  "You what?" His regular, handsome brows lowered over his eyes and he frowned. "You're not serious, surely."

  "Very serious, Jaunty. I owe a debt to Mr. Friend. He was kind to me. He understood and tolerated me when I needed understanding. I—oh, I was drowning in a sea of blackness, and he held out his hand to me."

  "And believe me, he's getting his pay for it. Why, he's treated like an honored guest! He's coddled. I knew something about what you say, and I've done everything I could for him." Here, indeed was a distorted outlook. The man could seize the old gentleman, hold him and his wife to ransom, and yet believe his mild jailering would pay a debt of gratitude.

  . . For an instant Rhoda's heart misgave her; in that instant her doubts of her affection for Jaunty became keener, more painful.

  "Will you release them?" she asked.

  "After traveling half around the world to get him! After pulling the thing off like this! My dear, you're joking with me."

  "I'm not joking."

  "You ask me seriously to let these people go?"

  "Very seriously, Jaunty. . . . But it is not a mere request. I—I am willing to pay for it. I am glad to pay for it."

  "In what coin?" he asked, sharply.

  "With myself," she said, and now that she had said the thing, made the proffer, she felt deadly faint, afraid.

  His hand covered his mouth with a slow, queer gesture, as it was wont to do when a tense moment was upon him. He bent forward to peer into her face.

  "You mean, Rhoda, that you will marry me if I will turn these folks loose?"

  "Yes."

  "And if I will not? will you marry me then?"

  "No."

  "Never?"

  "Never."

  "If you love me?"

  "If
I loved you a thousand times more than woman can love man, I would not marry you if you refuse me this."

  "It would bring misery to us both—to strangle our love."

  "Then it must bring misery."

  He was silent again, staring at her rather wonderingly; yet it is doubtful if yet he comprehended the nature of the thing she was doing. "Do you love me?" he asked, presently.

  "You shall never have reason to doubt it."

  "Do you love me?"

  "I—oh, I don't want to bring love into this. I—I offer you myself in return for what I ask. . . ." Her lips quivered. "I would rather I didn't love you; rather you were repulsive to me. Can't you see, Jaunty, I owe something and I must pay it. . . . It wouldn't be paying to—to give myself to the man I love. . . ."

  "Women! . . ." His voice was strained, but not harsh, and he regarded her strangely. "You want to be a martyr." But he did not speak sneeringly.

  "I want to pay. . . ."

  "So you would rather not tell me if you love me. . . . But I think I shall insist. The bargain sticks here. Do you or don't you?"

  "I—I do not know. . . . But"—there had been revelations since she sat face to face with him—"but I think—not." Jaunty sighed. "Not good enough," he said.

  "You mean—?"

  "We'll leave the love part of it," he said, dryly, "and come down to brass tacks. . . . You want me to throw a fortune in the air so you can make a noble sacrifice. . . . And, by Jove, it is pretty average fine, Rhoda. I'm admitting that. . . . Um. . . . I guess you don't know me as well as I thought you did. . . . I love you. There's no harm in saying that. But I'm not the sort to be turned from a purpose by love or hate. It wouldn't do in my business to let any woman twist you around her finger. You've no right. And that's flat. . . . No, I will not let Reuben Friend go."

  "Jaunty, I will make it up to you. I'll follow you. I'll go your way and think your way and be your way. . . . You say I'm born to it, that it's in my blood and that I can't help it. . . . You've said the world won't let me go the other way. . . . I don't know. But I won’t ever struggle again, or ask questions again, or try to find out the rights and wrongs. . . I'll be your wife, your partner—in everything."

  He got up and paced the length of the tent and she could see that his fists were knotted at his sides. When he turned again there was no sign of trouble upon his face. He was the old Bailey, Jaunty, debonair, smiling, reckless. . . . He had made up his mind. . . . Even had he inclined to accept Rhoda's offer and to carry out his part of it faithfully, he questioned his ability to do so. Other factors than his own desire entered the matter. "Friend Abdullah would hide his knife in my back," he said to himself, and as Abdullah directed the sheik would move. He realized how completely he was in the hands of his allies, and even in most favorable circumstances was not wholly at his ease. No, the thing would be impossible. The Bedouins held the captives, had placed themselves outside the law, and it was not to be expected they would forego their expectation of profit for a whim of his. . . . he shrugged his shoulders. What of it? Here was Rhoda with an offer. He had but to accept it to win her for his own—and he was far from being a meticulously scrupulous young man. What matter, anyhow? He loved Rhoda, probably she loved him. He was honest in believing she was destined and suited for a life complementary to his own. . . . Then no harm would be done to her. In reality she would benefit if he beguiled her by accepting her offer and by keeping his prisoners as well.

  "It's a bet, Rhoda," he said, "but you've got to give me time to work it out. These Arabs aren't going to sit by and giggle while I kill the goose just when it’s ready to cackle over a golden egg."

  "You mean it? You promise!" What joy she experienced was that of a martyr; there was nothing in it of the rapture of a young girl surrendering to her lover. . . . It was not unnatural that in her present frame of mind she should be glad of this, for the penalties of sacrifice were what she craved. And yet she was afraid, afraid of Jaunty, afraid of herself, afraid of the future. Having bound herself for life to this man, in this moment of pledging herself to him, she knew that she did not love him as a wife should love a husband.

  Bailey was wise in his restraint; he claimed none of the privileges of the accepted lover, and she felt a faint glow of gratitude.

  "I'll play fair with you, Rhoda," he said. "When we are married I'll—there's nothing I won't do to make you happy. . . . What a life we'll have together! . . ."

  "Now I'll go back, Jaunty," she said.

  "Go back?" He shook his head. "No, part of the bargain is that you stay. I can't have you going back—nor your dragoman. Got to play it safe. . . . You won't be lonesome, for there's quite a party here and all friends of yours. I forgot to say the professor is a guest."

  "Paul Dare!"

  "In the tent with a broken head and a twisted leg."

  "You—you fought?"

  "No. He wrecked himself saving a child."

  "What?"

  "And such a kid, too. Crippled and sickly and blind in one eye. It would have been a blessing to the child if he'd left it alone."

  "Paul Dare did that? Risked his life for—"

  "A filthy Bedouin kid. And he risked it, too, I'll hand him that. Scooped it right off the front wheels of my car. There's more to that bird than the paint shows."

  It puzzled her, for it was so out of his character, so at odds with him as she had known him. She could not conceive of him, the complete egoist, risking the one life he deemed of importance for anybody—least of all for a diseased, misshapen child. She pressed for details. "You're sure? There's no mistake?"

  "He did it all right. . . . And how he got there I don't know yet. It was where we were getting the reception ready for Mr. Friend. Somehow he dropped onto it. . . . Determined beggar, too. We left rim unconscious under a tree while we went on the job, and he with a split head and a leg no human being could walk on, managed somehow to crawl around us to the road. Another couple of minutes and he'd have warned the Friends and we would have been out of luck. . . " Jaunty shook his head admiringly. "I'll say it took determination to do what he did—and some nerve, for he must have known my Bedouin friends would take a hack at him if they caught him at it."

  "Where is he?" Rhoda asked, faintly.

  "In the tent there."

  "Is—is he badly hurt?"

  "No. Headache and a limp, but a couple of days will fix him up as good as ever.''

  "I—want to see him,' she said.

  "Certainly. Gentle hand on the brow and all that. Go right in."

  She moved toward t1 entrance, paused, turned. "Jaunty, when can you release Mr. Friend?"

  "Probably tonight. . . Then we'll head for Jerusalem and the American consul."

  "But—but, Jaunty, I can't stay. I must go back."

  "We'll argue that later," he said, but when she disappeared within he walked swiftly to where Abdullah squatted before a coffee pot on its bed of coals. "Miss Fair stays here," he said, sharply, "and her dragoman. Have the boys see to it they don't slip away."

  Abdullah lifted his voice and four Bedouins, each with rifle in the hollow of his arm, stalked away to assume watchful stations on four sides of the tent.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  HANA EFFENDI was in Nazareth! It was not there he was to be expected, for Trans-Jordania had swallowed him up. But he had his doubts of Trans-Jordania and its wilderness. So, making his dispositions, giving his orders, he returned swiftly by motor to Nazareth to see if there were threads to be gathered up, and he found a tangle of them. He found much more; he found all Palestine to be in turmoil and excitement, and his British superiors, who had seemed to him phlegmatic and easy-going; to have changed their character overnight. Now they were exceedingly interested and businesslike. From Dan to Beersheeba they were in action, and the perpetrators of the abduction of Reuben Friend had pulled about their ears such a hornets' nest as was likely to prove exceedingly inconvenient to them. Here was no pretense of solicitude as under the Turkish regime, but a real,
efficient, dogged effort. Government House yonder in Jerusalem under the shadow of the Mount of Olives gave birth to such a litter of wires and orders that: it behooved underlings to bestir themselves; and to the activities of the police were added the more far-reaching and grim expeditionings of Anglo-Saxon troopers.

  If Hana Effendi harbored any doubt as to the importance of Reuben Friend, this state of affairs expelled it.

  Here was one of the world happenings which are news. Special correspondents were hastening; transatlantic cables were vibrating expensively as they carried surmise and fact and yellow-tinged fiction to the newspapers in America. It was the Rasouli affair ever again, but on a larger canvas with more important actors!

  The police inspector vas more Oriental than Western. He was clear-sighted, able, apt at duplicity—and because he had been born and reared in an atmosphere tainted with massacres, burnings, slayings, he was more or less calloused to human suffering. Large capabilities for cruelty resided in him—or if not actual cruelty as we understand it on this side the Atlantic, then indifference to the fate of the individual or to masses of individuals. . . . At that moment, in a time of comparative peace, fifty thousand refugees from Smyrna suffered in tents on the seashore hard by Beyrout. Children were starving. . . . It was always so. Your fish is unconscious of the water in which he swims. . . .

  Also Hana Effendi, serving a new master, was not averse to piling up credit for himself, and so he did not take the British wholly into his confidence. In his Oriental way he hoped to outwit both his employers and the criminals they sought—obtaining himself what benefits would derive from capture and succor of the victims.

  Therefore he acted cautiously, but with that devious, cold cunning which might have been expected. . . . Of course Abdullah was gone and his house deserted, but Hana caused it to be searched. Paul Dare was gone, had disappeared utterly after that furtive entry and exit from Abdullah's lurking-place—and so he was placed in Hana's mind. Rhoda Fair was gone, Rhoda whom he had viewed with suspicion from the beginning, and whom, also, he had seen to issue from that same center of intrigue. . . . In her own land she was an associate of criminals, daughter of a famous criminal, a criminal herself. Rhoda was catalogued.