THE BITTER FRUIT
Fortune had a hearty contempt for persons who ate their breakfast in
bed. For her the glory of the day was the fresh fairness of the morning,
when every one's step was buoyant, and all life stirred energetically.
There was cheer and hope everywhere; men faced their labors with clear
eye and feared nothing; women sang at their work. It was only at the
close of day that despair and defeat stalked the highways. So she was up
with the sun, whether in her own garden or in these odd and mystical
cities. Thus she saw the native as he was, not as he later in the day
pretended to be, for the benefit of the Feringhi about to be stretched
upon the sacrificial stone. She saw, with gladness, the honey-bee
thirling the rose, the plowman's share baring the soil: the morning,
the morning, the two or three hours that were all, all her own. Her
mother was always irritable and petulant in the morning, and her uncle
never developed the gift of speech till after luncheon.
She had the same love of prowling that lured Ryanne from the beaten
paths. She was not inquisitive but curious, and that ready disarming
smile of hers opened many a portal.
She was balancing upon her gloved palm, thoughtfully, a Soudanese
head-trinket, a pendant of twisted gold-wires, flawed emeralds and
second pearls, really exquisite and not generally to be found outside
the expensive shops in the European quarters, and there infrequently.
The merchant wanted twenty pounds for it. Fortune shook her head,
regretfully. It was far beyond her means. She sighed. Only once in a
great while she saw something for which her whole heart cried out. This
pendant was one of these.
"I will give you five pounds for it. That is all I have with me."
"Salaam, madame," said the jeweler, reaching for the pendant.
"If you will send it to the Hotel Semiramis this afternoon...." But she
faltered at the sight of the merchant's incredulous smile.
"I'll give you ten for it; not a piastre more. I can get one like it in
the Shâriâ Kâmel for that amount."
Both Fortune and the merchant turned.
"You, Horace?"
"Yes, my child. And what are you doing here alone, without a dragoman?"
"Oh, I have been through here alone many times. I'm not afraid. Isn't it
beautiful? He wants twenty pounds for it, and I can not afford that."
She had not seen him in many weeks, yet she accepted his sudden
appearance without question or surprise. She was used to his turning up
at unexpected moments. Of course, she had known that he was in Cairo:
where her mother and uncle were this secretive man was generally within
calling. There had been a time when she had eagerly plied him with
questions, but he had always erected barriers of evasion, and finally
she ceased her importunities, for she concluded that her questions were
such. No matter to whom she turned, there was no one to answer her
questions, questions born of doubt and fear.
"Ten pounds," repeated Ryanne, a hand in his pocket.
[Illustration]
The merchant laughed. Here were a young man and his sweetheart. His
experience had taught him, and not unwisely, that love is an easy
victim, too proud to haggle, too generous to bargain sharply. "Twenty,"
he reiterated.
"Salaam!" said Ryanne. "Good day!" He drew the somewhat resisting hand
of Fortune under his arm and made for the door. "Sh!" he whispered.
"Leave it to me." They gained the street.
The merchant was dazed. He had misjudged what he now recognized as an
old hand. The two were turning up another street when he ran out,
shouting to them and waving the pendant. Ryanne laughed.
"Ten pounds. I am a poor man, effendi, and I need the money. Ten pounds.
I am giving it away." The merchant's eyes filled with tears, a trick
left to him from out the ruins of his youth, that ready service to
forestall the merited rod.
Ryanne counted out ten sovereigns and put the pendant in Fortune's
hand. And the pleasure in his heart was such as he had not known in many
days. The merchant wisely hurried back to his shop.
"But...." she began protestingly.
"Tut, tut! I have known you since you wore short dresses and
tam-o'-shanters."
"I really can not accept it as a gift. Let me borrow the ten pounds."
"And why can't you accept this little gift from me?"
She had no ready answer. She gazed steadily at the dull pearls and the
flaky emeralds. She could not ask him where he had got those sovereigns.
She could not possibly be so cruel. She could not dissemble in words
like her mother. That gold she knew to be a part of a dishonest bargain
whose forestep had been a theft--more, a sacrilege. Her honesty was like
pure gold, unalloyed, unmixed with sophistic subterfuges. That the young
man who had purchased the rug might be mildly peccable had not yet
occurred to her.
"Why not, Fortune?" Ryanne was very earnest, and there was a pinch at
his heart.
"Because...."
"Don't you like me, just a little?"
"Why, I do like you, Horace. But I do not like any man well enough to
accept expensive gifts from him. I do not wish to hurt you, but it is
impossible. The only concession I'll make is to borrow the money."
"Well, then, let it go at that." He was too wise to press her.
"And can you afford to throw away ten pounds?" with assumed lightness.
"My one permanent impression of you is the young man who was always
forced to borrow car-fare whenever he returned from Monte Carlo."
"A fool and his money. But I'm a rich man now," he volunteered. And
briefly he sketched the exploit of the Yhiordes rug.
"It was very brave of you. But has it ever occurred to you that it
wasn't honest?"
"Honest?" frankly astonished that she should question the ethics. "Oh, I
say, Fortune; you don't call it dishonest to get the best of a pagan!
Aren't they always getting the best of us?"
"If you had bargained with him and beaten him down, it would have been
different. But, Horace, you stole it; you admit that you did."
"I took my life in my hands. I think that evened up things."
"No. And you sold it to Mr. Jones?"
"Yes, and Mr. Jones was only too glad to buy it. I told him the facts.
He wasn't particularly eager to bring up the ethics of the case. Why,
child, what the deuce is a Turk? I shouldn't cry out if some one stole
my Bible."
"Good gracious! do you carry one?"
"Well, there's always one on the room-stand in the hotels I patronize."
"I suppose it all depends upon how we look at things."
"That's it. A different pair of spectacles for every pair of eyes."
If only he weren't in love with her! thought the girl. He would then be
an amusing comrade. But whenever he met her he quietly pressed his suit.
He had never spoken openly of love, for which she was grateful, but his
attentions, his little kindnesses, his unobtrusive protection when those
other men were at the villa, made the reading between the lines no
difficult matter.
"What shall you do if this Mahomed you speak of comes?"
"Turn him loose upon our friend Jones," with a laugh.
"And what will he do to him?"
"Carry him off to Bagdad and chop off his head," Ryanne jested.
"Tell me, is there any possibility of Mr. Jones coming to harm?"
"Can't say." Her concern for Percival annoyed him.
"Is it fair, when he paid you generously?"
He did not look into the grave eyes. They were the only pair that ever
disconcerted him. "My dear Fortune, it's a question which is the more
valuable to me, my skin or Percival's."
"It isn't fair."
"From my point of view it's fair enough. I warned him; I told him the
necessary facts, the eventual dangers. He accepted them all with the
Yhiordes. I see nothing unfair in the deal, since I risked my own life
in the first place."
"And why must you do these desperate things?"
"Oh, I love excitement. My one idea in life is to avoid the humdrum."
"Is it necessary to risk your life for these excitements? Is your life
nothing more to you than something to experiment with?"
"Truth, sometimes I don't know, Fortune. Sometimes I don't care. When
one has gambled for big stakes, it is hard to play again for penny
points."
"A strong, healthy man like you ought not to court death."
"I do not seek it. My only temptation is to see how near I can get to
the Man in the Shroud, as some poet calls it, without being touched.
I'll make you my confessor. You see, it is like this. A number of
wearied men recently formed a company whereby monotony became an
obsolete word in our vocabulary. You must not think I'm jesting; I'm
serious enough. This company ferrets out adventures and romances and
sells them to men of spirit. I became a member, and the trip to Bagdad
is the result. One never has to share with the company. The rewards are
all yours. All one has to do is to pay a lump sum down for the adventure
furnished. You work out the end yourself, unhindered and unassisted."
"Are you really serious?"
"Never more so. Now, Percival Algernon has always been wanting an
adventure, but the practical side of him has made him hold aloof. I told
him about this concern, and he refuses to believe in it. So I am going
to undertake to prove it to him. This is confidential. You will say
nothing, I know."
"He will come to no harm physically?"
"Lord, no! It will be mild and innocuous. Of course, if any one told him
that an adventure was toward for his especial benefit, it would spoil
all. I can rely upon your silence?"
She was silent. He witnessed her indecision with distrust. Perhaps he
had said too much.
"Won't you promise? Haven't I always been kind to you, Fortune, times
when you most needed kindness?"
"I promise to say nothing. But if any harm comes to that young man,
either in jest or in earnest, I will never speak to you again."
"I see that, after getting Percival Algernon into an adventure, I've got
to cicerone him safely out of it. Well, I accept the responsibility."
Some days later he was going to recall this assurance.
"Sometimes I wonder...." pensively.
"Wonder about what?"
"What manner of man you are."
"I should have been a great deal better man had I met you ten years
ago."
"What? When I was eleven?" with a levity intended to steer him away from
this channel.
"You know what I mean," he answered, moody and dejected.
She opened her purse and dropped the pendant into it, but did not speak.
"Ten years ago," abstractedly. "What a lot of things may happen in ten
years! Deaths, births, marriages," he went on; "the snuffing out of
kingdoms and republics; wars, panics, famine; honor to some and dishonor
to others. It kind of makes a fellow grind his teeth, little girl; it
kind of makes him shut his fists and long to run amuck."
"Why should a strong, intelligent man, such as you are, think like that?
You are resourceful and unafraid. Why should you talk like that? You are
young, too. Why?"
He stopped and looked full into her eyes. "Do you really wish to know?"
"Had I better?" with a wisdom beyond her years.
"No, you had better not. I'm not a good man, Fortune, as criterions go.
I've slipped here and there; I've gambled and drunk and squandered my
time. Why, in my youth I was as model a boy as ever was Percival. Where
the divarication took place I can't say. There's always two forks in the
road, Fortune, and many of us take the wrong one. It's easier going.
Fine excuse; eh? Some persons would call me a scoundrel, a black-leg; in
some ways, yes. But in the days to come I want you always to remember
the two untarnished spots upon my shield of honor: I have never cheated
a man at cards nor run away with his wife. The devil must give me these
merits, however painful it may be to him. Ten years ago, only a decade;
good Lord! it's like a hundred years ago, sometimes."
Fortune breathed with difficulty. Never before had he taken her into his
confidence to such extent. She essayed to speak; the old terror seemed
fairly to smother her. It was not what he had told her, but what she
wished to but dared not ask. She was like Bluebeard's wife, only she had
not the moral courage to open the door of the grisly closet.... Her
mother, her uncle; what of them, ah, what of them? The crooked street
vanished; the roar dwindled away; she was alone, all, all alone.
"I suppose I ought not to have told you," he said troubled at the misery
he saw gathered in her eyes and vaguely conscious of what had written it
there. "Your mother and uncle have been very kind to me. They know less
of me than you do. I have been to them a kind of errand-boy; a
happy-go-lucky fellow, who cheered them when they had the doldrums."
With forced cheerfulness he again took her hand and snuggled it under
his arm, giving it a friendly, reassuring pat. "I'll not speak to you of
love, child, but a hair of your head is more precious to me than all
Midas' gold. Whenever I've thought of you, I've tried to be good.
Honestly."
"And can't you go back to the beginning and start anew?" tremulously.
"Can any one go back? The moving finger writes. An hour is a terrible
thing when you look to see what can happen in it. But, come; sermons!
I'd far rather see you smile. Won't you?"
She tried to, but to him it was sadder than her tears would have been.
For an hour they walked through the dim and musty streets. He exerted
himself to amuse her and fairly succeeded. But never did the
unaccountable fear, that presage of misfortune, sleep in her heart. And
at last, when he took her to her carriage and bade her good-by till
dinner, a half-formed idea began to grow in her brain: to save Mr. Jones
without betraying Ryanne.
The latter's carriage was at the other end of the bazaars; so he strode
sullenly through the press, rudely elbowing those who got in his way. An
occasional curse was flung after him; but his height, his breadth of
shoulder, his lowering face, precluded anything more active. The Moslems
had a deal of faith in the efficacy of curses; so the jostled ones
rested upon the promise of these, satisfied that directly, or in the
near future, Allah would blast the unbelieving dog in his tracks.
What cleverness the mother and scallawag of an uncle had shown to have
kept the child in ignorance all these years! That she saw darkly, as
through a fog, he was perfectly sure. Sooner or later the storm would
burst upon her innocent head, and then God alone knew what would become
of her. Oh, damn the selfish, sordid world! At that instant a great
longing rolled over him to cut loose from all these evil webs, to begin
anew somewhere, even if that somewhere were but a wilderness, a clearing
in a forest.
This moment flashed and was gone. Next, he reviewed with chagrin and
irritation the folly of his ultimatum of the preceding night. He had had
not the slightest semblance of a plan in his head. Sifted down, he saw
only his savage and senseless humor and the desire to stir up discord.
Gioconda was right. Fortune was above them all, in feeling, in instinct,
in loyalty. What right had he, roisterer by night that he was,
predaceous outlaw, what right had he to look upon Fortune as his own?
Harm her! He would have lopped off his right hand first.
Well, he had but little time, and Percival Algernon called for prompt
action. The young fool was smitten with Fortune. Any one could see that.
As he shouldered his pathway to the carriage, his eyes seeing but not
visualizing objects, three brown men glided in between him and the
carriage-step.