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THE CARPET FROM BAGDAD
[Illustration]
THE CARPET FROM BAGDAD
by
HAROLD MACGRATH
Author of
A Splendid Hazard
The Man on the Box
With Illustrations by Andre Castaigne
Indianapolis
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
Publishers
Copyright 1911
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
TO
ROBERT HICHENS
_The wild hawk to the windswept sky,_
_The deer to the wholesome wold,_
_And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid,_
_As it was in the days of old._
--_Rudyard Kipling._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I WHAT'S IN A NAME? 1
II AN AFFABLE ROGUE 20
III THE HOLY YHIORDES 37
IV AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE 55
V THE GIRL WHO WASN'T WANTED 74
VI MOONLIGHT AND POETRY 96
VII RYANNE TABLES HIS CARDS 114
VIII THE PURLOINED CABLE 132
IX THE BITTER FRUIT 145
X MAHOMED LAUGHS 160
XI EPISODIC 179
XII THE CARAVAN IN THE DESERT 200
XIII NOT A CHEERFUL OUTLOOK 219
XIV MAHOMED OFFERS FREEDOM 240
XV FORTUNE'S RIDDLE SOLVED 259
XVI MAHOMED RIDES ALONE 279
XVII MRS. CHEDSOYE HAS HER DOUBTS 301
XVIII THE MAN WHO DIDN'T CARE 323
XIX FORTUNE DECIDES 337
XX MARCH HARES 354
XXI A BOTTLE OF WINE 367
XXII THE END OF THE PUZZLE 380
CHAPTER I
WHAT'S IN A NAME?
To possess two distinctly alien red corpuscles in one's blood,
metaphorically if not in fact, two characters or individualities under
one epidermis, is, in most cases, a peculiar disadvantage. One hears of
scoundrels and saints striving to consume one another in one body,
angels and harpies; but ofttimes, quite the contrary to being a curse,
these two warring temperaments become a man's ultimate blessing: as in
the case of George P. A. Jones, of Mortimer & Jones, the great
metropolitan Oriental rug and carpet company, all of which has a
dignified, sonorous sound. George was divided within himself. This he
would not have confessed even into the trusted if battered ear of the
Egyptian Sphynx. There was, however, no demon-angel sparring for points
in George's soul. The difficulty might be set forth in this manner: On
one side stood inherent common sense; on the other, a boundless, roseate
imagination which was likewise inherent--a kind of quixote imagination
of suitable modern pattern. This _alter ego_ terrified him whenever it
raised its strangely beautiful head and shouldered aside his
guardian-angel (for that's what common sense is, argue to what end you
will) and pleaded in that luminous rhetoric under the spell of which our
old friend Sancho often fell asleep.
P. A., as they called him behind the counters, was but twenty-eight, and
if he was vice-president in his late father's shoes he didn't wabble
round in them to any great extent. In a crowd he was not noticeable; he
didn't stand head and shoulders above his fellow-men, nor would he have
been mistaken by near-sighted persons, the myopes, for the Vatican's
Apollo in the flesh. He was of medium height, beardless, slender, but
tough and wiry and enduring. You may see his prototype on the streets a
dozen times the day, and you may also pass him without turning round for
a second view. Young men like P. A. must be intimately known to be
admired; you did not throw your arm across his neck, first-off. His
hair was brown and closely clipped about a head that would have gained
the attention of the phrenologist, if not that of the casual passer-by.
His bumps, in the phraseology of that science, were good ones. For the
rest, he observed the world through a pair of kindly, shy, blue eyes.
Young girls, myopic through ignorance or silliness, seeing nothing
beyond what the eyes see, seldom gave him a second inspection; for he
did not know how to make himself attractive, and was mortally afraid of
the opposite, or opposing, sex. He could bully-rag a sheik out of his
camels' saddle-bags, but petticoats and lace parasols and small Oxfords
had the same effect upon him that the prodding stick of a small boy has
upon a retiring turtle. But many a worldly-wise woman, drawing out with
tact and kindness the truly beautiful thoughts of this young man's soul,
sadly demanded of fate why a sweet, clean boy like this one had not been
sent to her in her youth. You see, the worldly-wise woman knows that it
is invariably the lay-figure and not Prince Charming that a woman
marries, and that matrimony is blindman's-buff for grown-ups.
Many of us lay the blame upon our parents. We shift the burden of
wondering why we have this fault and lack that grace to the shoulders of
our immediate forebears. We go to the office each morning denying that
we have any responsibility; we let the boss do the worrying. But George
never went prospecting in his soul for any such dross philosophy. He was
grateful for having had so beautiful a mother; proud of having had so
honest a sire; and if either of them had endued him with false weights
he did his best to even up the balance.
The mother had been as romantic as any heroine out of Mrs. Radcliff's
novels, while the father had owned to as much romance as one generally
finds in a thorough business man, which is practically none at all. The
very name itself is a bulwark against the intrusions of romance. One can
not lift the imagination to the prospect of picturing a Jones in ruffles
and highboots, pinking a varlet in the midriff. It smells of
sugar-barrels and cotton-bales, of steamships and railroads, of stolid
routine in the office and of placid concern over the daily news under
the evening lamp.
Mrs. Jones, lovely, lettered yet not worldly, had dreamed of her boy,
bayed and decorated, marrying the most distinguished woman in all
Europe, whoever she might be. Mr. Jones had had no dreams at all, and
had put the boy to work in the shipping department a little while after
the college threshold had been crossed, outward bound. The mother, while
sweet and gentle, had a will, iron under velvet, and when she held out
for Percival Algernon and a decent knowledge of modern languages, the
old man agreed if, on the other hand, the boy's first name should be
George and that he should learn the business from the cellar up. There
were several tilts over the matter, but at length a truce was declared.
It was agreed that the boy himself ought to have a word to say upon a
subject which concerned him more vitally than any one else. So, at the
age of fifteen, when he was starting off for preparatory school, he was
advised to choose for himself. He was an obedient son, adoring his
mother and idolizing his father. He wrote himself down as George
Percival Algernon Jones, promised to become a linguist and to learn the
rug business from the cellar up. On the face of it, it looked like a big
job; it all depended upon the boy.
The first day at school his misery began. He had signed himself as
George P. A. Jones, no small diplomacy for a lad; but the two initials,
standing up like dismantled pines in the midst of uninteresting
landscape, roused the curiosity of his school-mates. Boys are boys the
world over, and possess a finesse in cruelty that only the Indian can
match; and it did not take them long to unearth the fatal secret. For
three years he was Percy Algy, and not only the boys laughed, but the
pretty girls sniggered. Many a time he had returned to his dormitory
decorated (not in accord with the fond hopes of his mother) with a
swollen ear, or a ruddy proboscis, or a green-brown eye. There was a
limit, and when they stepped over that, why, he proceeded to the best of
his ability to solve the difficulty with his fists. George was no
milksop; but Percival Algernon would have been the Old Man of the Sea on
broader shoulders than his. He dimly realized that had he been named
George Henry William Jones his sun would have been many diameters
larger. There was a splendid quality of pluck under his apparent
timidity, and he stuck doggedly to it. He never wrote home and
complained. What was good enough for his mother was good enough for him.
It seemed just an ordinary matter of routine for him to pick up French
and German verbs. He was far from being brilliant, but he was sensitive
and his memory was sound. Since his mother's ambition was to see him an
accomplished linguist, he applied himself to the task as if everything
in the world depended upon it, just as he knew that when the time came
he would apply himself as thoroughly to the question of rugs and
carpets.
Under all this filial loyalty ran the pure strain of golden romance,
side by side with the lesser metal of practicality. When he began to
read the masters he preferred their romances to their novels. He even
wrote poetry in secret, and when his mother discovered the fact she
cried over the sentimental verses. The father had to be told. He laughed
and declared that the boy would some day develop into a good writer of
advertisements. This quiet laughter, unburdened as it was with ridicule,
was enough to set George's muse a-winging, and she never came back.
After leaving college he was given a modest letter of credit and told
to go where he pleased for a whole year. George started out at once in
quest of the Holy Grail, and there are more roads to that than there are
to Rome. One may be reasonably sure of getting into Rome, whereas the
Holy Grail (diversified, variable, innumerable) is always the exact sum
of a bunch of hay hanging before old Dobbin's nose. Nevertheless, George
galloped his fancies with loose rein. He haunted the romantic quarters
of the globe; he hunted romance, burrowed and plowed for it; and never
his spade clanged musically against the hidden treasure, never a forlorn
beauty in distress, not so much as chapter one of the Golden Book
offered its dazzling first page. George lost some confidence.
Two or three times a woman looked into the young man's mind, and in his
guilelessness they effected sundry holes in his letter of credit, but
left his soul singularly untouched. The red corpuscle, his father's
gift, though it lay dormant, subconsciously erected barriers. He was
innocent, but he was no fool. That one year taught him the lesson,
rather cheaply, too. If there was any romance in life, it came
uninvited, and if courted and sought was as quick on the wing as that
erstwhile poesy muse.
The year passed, and while he had not wholly given up the quest, the
practical George agreed with the romantic Percival to shelve it
indefinitely. He returned to New York with thirty-pounds sterling out of
the original thousand, a fact that rejuvenated his paternal parent by
some ten years.
"Jane, that boy is all right. Percival Algernon could not kill a boy
like that."
"Do you mean to infer that it ever could?" Sometimes a qualm wrinkled
her conscience. Her mother's heart told her that her son ought not to be
shy and bashful, that it was not in the nature of his blood to suspect
ridicule where there was none. Perhaps she had handicapped him with
those names; but it was too late now to admit of this, and useless,
since it would not have remedied the evil.
Jones hemmed and hawed for a space. "No," he answered; "but I was afraid
he might try to live up to it; and no Percival Algernon who lived up to
it could put his nose down to a Shah Abbas and tell how many knots it
had to the square inch. I'll start him in on the job to-morrow."
Whereupon the mother sat back dreamily. Now, where was the girl worthy
her boy? Monumental question, besetting every mother, from Eve down,
Eve, whose trials in this direction must have been heartrending!
George left the cellar in due time, and after that he went up the ladder
in bounds, on his own merit, mind you, for his father never stirred a
hand to boost him. He took the interest in rugs that turns a buyer into
a collector; it became a fascinating pleasure rather than a business. He
became invaluable to the house, and acquired some fame as a judge and an
appraiser. When the chief-buyer retired George was given the position,
with an itinerary that carried him half way round the planet once a
year, to Greece, Turkey, Persia, Arabia, and India, the lands of the
genii and the bottles, of arabesques, of temples and tombs, of
many-colored turbans and flowing robes and distracting tongues. He
walked always in a kind of mental enchantment.
The suave and elusive Oriental, with his sharp practices, found his
match in this pleasant young man, who knew the history of the very wools
and cottons and silks woven in a rug or carpet. So George prospered,
became known in strange places, by strange peoples; and saw romance,
light of foot and eager of eye, pass and repass; learned that romance
did not essentially mean falling in love or rescuing maidens from
burning houses and wrecks; that, on the contrary, true romance was
kaleidoscopic, having more brilliant facets than a diamond; and that the
man who begins with nothing and ends with something is more wonderful
than any excursion recounted by Sinbad or any tale by Scheherazade. But
he still hoped that the iridescent goddess would some day touch his
shoulder and lead him into that maze of romance so peculiar to his own
fancy.
And then into this little world of business and pleasure came death and
death again, leaving him alone and with a twisted heart. Riches mattered
little, and the sounding title of vice-president still less. It was with
a distinct shock that he realized the mother and the father had been
with him so long that he had forgotten to make other friends. From one
thing to another he turned in hope to soothe the smart, to heal the
wound; and after a time he drifted, as all shy, intelligent and
imaginative men drift who are friendless, into the silent and intimate
comradeship of inanimate things, such as jewels, ivories, old metals,
rare woods and ancient embroideries, and perhaps more comforting than
all these, good books.
The proper tale of how the aforesaid iridescent goddess jostled (for it
scarce may be said that she led) him into a romance lacking neither
comedy nor tragedy, now begins with a trifling bit of retrospection. One
of those women who were not good and who looked into the clear pool of
the boy's mind saw the harmless longing there, and made note, hoping to
find profit by her knowledge when the pertinent day arrived. She was a
woman so pleasing, so handsome, so adroit, that many a man, older and
wiser than George, found her mesh too strong for him. Her plan matured,
suddenly and brilliantly, as projects of men and women of her class and
caliber without variation do.
Late one December afternoon (to be precise, 1909), George sat on the
tea-veranda of the Hotel Semiramis in Cairo. A book lay idly upon his
knees. It was one of those yarns in which something was happening every
other minute. As adventures go, George had never had a real one in all
his twenty-eight years, and he believed that fate had treated him rather
shabbily. He didn't quite appreciate her reserve. No matter how late he
wandered through the mysterious bazaars, either here in Egypt or over
yonder in India, nothing ever befell more exciting than an argument with
a carriage-driver. He never carried small-arms, for he would not have
known how to use them. The only deadly things in his hands were
bass-rods and tennis-racquets. No, nothing ever happened to him; yet he
never met a man in a ship's smoke-room who hadn't run the gamut of
thrilling experiences. As George wasn't a liar himself, he believed all
he saw and most of what he heard.
Well, here he was, eight-and-twenty, a pocket full of money, a heart
full of life, and as hopeless an outlook, so far as romance and
adventure were concerned, as an old maid in a New England village. Why
couldn't things befall him as they did the chap in this book? He was
sure he could behave as well, if not better; for this fellow was too
handsome, too brave, too strong, not to be something of an ass once in a
while.
"George, you old fool, what's the use?" he thought. "What's the use of a
desire that never goes in a straight line, but always round and round in
a circle?"
He thrust aside his grievance and surrendered to the never-ending wonder
of the Egyptian sunset; the Nile feluccas, riding upon perfect
reflections; the date-palms, black and motionless against the
translucent blue of the sky; the amethystine prisms of the Pyramids, and
the deepening gold of the desert's brim. He loved the Orient, always so
new, always so strange, yet ever so old and familiar.
A carriage stopped in front, and his gaze naturally shifted. There is
ceaseless attraction in speculating about new-comers in a hotel, what
they are, what they do, where they come from, and where they are going.
A fine elderly man of fifty got out. In the square set of his shoulders,
the flowing white mustache and imperial, there was a suggestion of
militarism. He was immediately followed by a young woman of twenty,
certainly not over that age. George sighed wistfully. He envied those
polo-players and gentleman-riders and bridge-experts who were stopping
at the hotel. It wouldn't be an hour after dinner before some one of
them found out who she was and spoke to her in that easy style which he
concluded must be a gift rather than an accomplishment. You mustn't
suppose for a minute that George wasn't well-born and well-bred, simply
because his name was Jones. Many a Fitz-Hugh Maurice or Hugh
Fitz-Maurice might have been---- But, no matter. He knew instinctively,
then, what elegance was when he saw it, and this girl was elegant, in
dress, in movement. He rather liked the pallor of her skin, which hinted
that she wasn't one of those athletic girls who bounced in and out of
the dining-room, talking loudly and smoking cigarettes and playing
bridge for sixpenny points. She was tall. He was sure that her eyes were
on the level with his own. The grey veil that drooped from the rim of
her simple Leghorn hat to the tip of her nose obscured her eyes, so he
could not know that they were large and brown and indefinably sad. They
spoke not of a weariness of travel, but of a weariness of the world,
more precisely, of the people who inhabited it.
She and her companion passed on into the hotel, and if George's eyes
veered again toward the desert over which the stealthy purples of night
were creeping, the impulse was mechanical; he saw nothing. In truth, he
was desperately lonesome, and he knew, moreover, that he had no business
to be. He was young; he could at a pinch tell a joke as well as the next
man; and if he had never had what he called an adventure, he had seen
many strange and wonderful things and could describe them with that
mental afterglow which still lingers over the sunset of our first
expressions in poetry. But there was always that hydra-headed monster,
for ever getting about his feet, numbing his voice, paralyzing his
hands, and never he lopped off a head that another did not instantly
grow in its place. Even the sword of Perseus could not have saved him,
since one has to get away from an object in order to cut it down.
Had he really ever tried to overcome this monster? Had he not waited for
the propitious moment (which you and I know never comes) to throw off
this species from Hades? It is all very well, when you are old and dried
up, to turn to ivories and metals and precious stones; but when a
fellow's young! You can't shake hands with an ivory replica of the Taj
Mahal, nor exchange pleasantries with a Mandarin's ring, nor yet confide
joys and ills into a casket of rare emeralds; indeed, they do but
emphasize one's loneliness. If only he had had a dog; but one can not
carry a dog half way round the world and back, at least not with
comfort. What with all these new-fangled quarantine laws, duties, and
fussy ships' officers who wouldn't let you keep the animal in your
state-room, traveling with a four-footed friend was almost an
impossibility. To be sure, women with poodles.... And then, there was
the bitter of acid in the knowledge that no one ever came up to him and
slapped him on the shoulder with a--"_Hel_-lo, Georgie, old sport;
what's the good word?" for the simple fact that his shoulder was always
bristling with spikes, born of the fear that some one was making fun of
him.
Perchance his mother's spirit, hovering over him this evening, might
have been inclined to tears. For they do say that the ghosts of the dear
ones are thus employed when we are near to committing some folly, or to
exploring some forgotten chamber of Pandora's box, or worse still, when
that lady intends emptying the whole contents down upon our unfortunate
heads. If so be, they were futile tears; Percival Algernon had
accomplished its deadly purpose.
Pandora? Well, then, for the benefit of the children. She was a lady who
was an intimate friend of the mythological gods. They liked her
appearance so well that they one day gave her a box, casket, chest, or
whatever it was, to guard. By some marvelous method, known only of gods,
they had got together all the trials and tribulations of mankind (and
some of the joys) and locked them up in this casket It was the Golden
Age then, as you may surmise. You recall Eve and the Apple? Well,
Pandora was a forecast of Eve; she couldn't keep her eyes off the latch,
and at length her hands--Fatal curiosity! Whirr! And everything has been
at sixes and at sevens since that time. Pandora is eternally recurring,
now here, now there; she is a blonde sometimes, and again she is a
brunette; and you may take it from George and me that there is always
something left in the casket.
George closed the book and consulted his sailing-list. In a short time
he would leave for Port Saïd, thence to Naples, Christmas there, and
home in January. Business had been ripping. He would be jolly glad to
get home again, to renew his comradeship with his treasures. And, by
Jove! there _was_ one man who slapped him on the shoulder, and he was no
less a person than the genial president of the firm, his father's
partner, at present his own. If the old chap had had a daughter now....
And here one comes at last to the bottom of the sack. He had only one
definite longing, a healthy human longing, the only longing worth while
in all this deep, wide, round old top: to love a woman and by her be
loved.
At exactly half after six the gentleman with the reversible cuffs
arrived; and George missed his boat.