FORTUNE DECIDES
George and Fortune were seated at breakfast. It was early morning. At
ten they were to depart for Jaffa, to take the tubby French packet there
to Alexandria. They could just about make it, and any delay meant a week
or ten days longer upon this ragged and inhospitable coast.
"Ryanne has probably overslept. After breakfast I'll go up and rout him
out. The one thing that really tickles me," George continued, as he
pared the tough rind from the skinny bacon, "is, we shan't have any
luggage. Think of the blessing of traveling without a trunk or a valise
or a steamer-roll!"
"Without even a comb or a hairbrush!"
"It's great fun." George broke his toast.
And Fortune wondered how she should tell him. She was without any toilet
articles. She hadn't even a tooth-brush; and it was quite out of the
question for her to bother him about such trifles, much as she needed
them. She would have to live in the clothes she wore, and trust that the
ship's stewardess might help her out in the absolute necessities.
Here the head-waiter brought George a letter. The address was enough for
George. No one but Ryanne could have written it. Without excusing
himself, he ripped off the envelope and read the contents. Fortune could
not resist watching him, for she grasped quickly that only Ryanne could
have written a letter here in Damascus. At first the tan upon George's
cheeks darkened--the sudden suffusion of blood; then it became lighter,
and the mouth and eyes and nose became stern.
"Is it bad news?"
"It all depends upon how you look at it. For my part, good riddance to
bad rubbish. Here, read it yourself."
She read:
"MY DEAR PERCIVAL:
"After all, I find that I can not reconcile myself to the dullness
of your olive-groves. I shall send the five-hundred to you when I
reach New York. With me it is as it was with the devil. When he
was sick, he vowed he would be a saint; but when he got well,
devil a saint was he. There used to be a rhyme about it, but I
have forgotten that. Anyhow, there you are. I feel that I am
conceding a point in regard to the money. It is contrary to the
laws and by-laws of the United Romance and Adventure Company to
refund. Still, I intend to hold myself to it.
"With hale affection,
"RYANNE."
"What do you think of that?" demanded George hotly. "I never did a good
action in my life that wasn't served ill. I'm a soft duffer, if there
ever was one."
"I shall never be ungrateful for your kindness to me."
"Oh, hang it! You're different; you're not like any other woman in the
world," he blurted; and immediately was seized with a mild species of
fright.
Fortune stirred her coffee and delicately scooped up the swirling
circles of foam.
"Old maids call that money," he said understandingly, eager to cover up
his boldness. "My mother used to tell me that there were lots of wonders
in a tea-cup."
"Tell me about your mother."
To him it was a theme never lacking in new expressions. When he spoke of
his mother, it altered the clear and boyish note in his voice; it became
subdued, reverent. He would never be aught than guileless; it was not in
his nature to divine anything save his own impulses. While he thought he
was pleasing her, each tender recollection, each praise, was in fact a
nail added to her crucifixion, self-imposed. However, she never lowered
her eyes, but kept them bravely directed into his. In the midst of one
of his panegyrics he caught sight of his watch which he had placed at
the side of his plate.
"By Jove! quarter to nine. I've got an errand or two to do, and there's
no need of your running your feet off on my account. I'll be back
quarter after." He dug into his pocket and counted out fifty pounds in
paper and gold. "You keep this till I get back."
She pushed it aside, half rising from her chair.
"Fortune, listen. Hereafter I am George, your brother George; and I do
not want you ever to question any action of mine. I am leaving this
money in case some accident befell me. You never can tell." He took her
hand and firmly pressed it down upon the money. "In half an hour,
sister, I'll be back. You did not think that I was going to run away?"
"No."
"Do you understand me now?"
"Yes."
While he was gone she remained seated at the table. She made little
pyramids of the gold, divided the even dates from the odd, arranged
Maltese crosses and circles and stars.... Pity, pity! Well, why should
she rebel against it? Was it not more than she had had hitherto? What
should she do? She closed her eyes. She would trouble her tired brain no
more about the future till they reached Naples. She would let this one
week drift her how it would.
George came in under the time-limit of his adventure. He had been upon
the most difficult errand imaginable, at least from a bachelor's point
of view. He carried two hand-bags. One of these he deposited in
Fortune's lap.
"Shall I open it?"
"If you wish."
She noted his embarrassment, and her immediate curiosity was not to be
denied. She slipped the catch and looked inside. There were combs and
brushes, soap and tooth-powder and talc, a manicure-set, a pair of soft
woolen slippers, and.... She glanced up quickly. The faintest rose stole
under her cheeks. It was droll; it was pathetically funny. She would
have given worlds to have seen him making the purchases.
"You are not offended?" he stammered.
"Why should I be? I am human; I have slept and lived for days in a
dress, and worn my hair down my back for lack of hair-pins and combs. I
am sure that it is a very nice nightgown."
Laughter overcame her. He laughed, too; not because the situation
appealed to him as laughable, but because there was something, an
indefinable something, in that laughter of hers that made him
wonderfully happy.
"Mr. Jones...."
"George," he interrupted determinedly.
"Brother George, it was very kind and thoughtful of you. Not one man in
a thousand would have thought of--of ... hair-pins!" More laughter.
"I didn't think of them; it was the clerk."
"He...."
"She."
"Well, then, she will achieve great things," lightly, though her heart
was full.
Tactfully he reached over and swept up the money.
"Shall I ever be able to repay you?" she said.
"Yes, by letting me be your brother; by not deciding the future till we
land in Naples; by letting me keep in touch with you, whatever your
ultimate decision may be. That isn't much. Will you promise that?"
"Yes."
They spoke no more of Ryanne. It was as though he had dropped out of
their lives completely. To a certain extent he had. They were to meet
him once again, however, in the last act of this whimsical drama, which
had drawn them both out of the commonplace and dropped them for a full
spin upon the whirligig of life.
In due time they arrived at Alexandria. There they found the great
transatlantic liner, homeward bound.
Ryanne would beat them into New York by ten days. He had picked up a
boat of the P. & O. line at Port Saïd, sailing without stop to
Marseilles. From there to Cherbourg was a trifling journey.
George knew the captain, and the captain not only knew George, but had
known George's father before him. The young man went to the heart of the
matter at once; and when he had finished his remarkable tale, the
captain lowered his cigar. It had gone out.
"And all this happened in the year 1909-1910! If any one but you, Mr.
Jones, had told me this, I'd have sent him ashore as a lunatic. You have
reported it?"
"What good would it do? We are out of it, and that's enough. More, we
do not want any one to know what we've been through. If the newspapers
got hold of it, there would be no living."
"You leave it to me," said the big-hearted German. "From here to Naples
she shall be as mine own daughter. You have not told me all?"
"No; only what I had of necessity to tell."
"Well, you know best I shall do my share to make her feel at home. She
is as pretty as a flower."
To this George agreed, but not verbally.
The steamer weighed anchor at six o'clock that evening, with only a
handful of passengers for the trip to Naples. George had wired from
Damascus to Cairo to have his luggage sent on, and he saw it put aboard
himself. Without letting Fortune know, he had also telegraphed the hotel
to forward whatever she had left; but the return wire informed him that
Mrs. Chedsoye had taken everything.
* * * * *
They were leaning against the starboard-rail, watching the slowly
converging lights of the harbor. Fortune had borrowed a cloak from her
stewardess and George wore the mufti of the first-officer. The captain
had offered his, but George had declined. He would have been lost in its
ample folds.
"I can not understand why they made no effort to find you," he mused.
"It doesn't seem quite human."
"Don't you understand? It is simple. My mother believes that Horace and
I ran away together. If not that, I ran away myself, as I that day
threatened to do. In either case, she saw nothing could be done in
trying to find out where I had gone. Perhaps she knows exactly what did
happen. Doubtless she has sent on my things to Mentone, which, of
course, I shall never see again. No, no! I can not go back there. I have
known the misery of suspense long enough." She lowered her head to the
rail.
He came quite near to her. His arms went out toward her, only to drop
down. He must wait. It was very hard. But nothing prevented his putting
forth a hand to press hers reassuringly, and saying: "Don't do that,
Fortune. It makes my heart ache to see a woman cry."
"I am not crying," came in muffled tones. "I am only sad, and tired,
tired."
"Everything will come out all right in the end," he encouraged. "Of
course you are tired. What woman wouldn't be, having gone through what
you have? Here; let's sit in the steamer-chairs till the bugle blows for
dinner. I'm a bit fagged out myself."
They lay back in the chairs, and no longer cared to talk. The lights
twinkled, but fainter and fainter, till at last only the pale line
between the sky and the sea remained. She turned her head and looked
sharply at him. He was sound asleep. "Poor boy!" she murmured softly.
"How careworn!" There was something grotesque in the mask of desert tan
and shaven skin. How patient he had been through it all, and how kind
and gentle to her! She remembered now of seeing him that night in Cairo,
and of remarking how young and fresh he seemed in comparison to the men
she knew and had met. And she must leave him, to go into the world and
fight her own battles. If God had but given to her a brother like this!
But brother he never could be, no, not even in the pleasant sense of
adoption. She did not want pity.... To think of his getting those things
for her in Damascus!... Pity suggested that she was weak and helpless,
whereas she knew that she was both patient and strong.... What did she
want? She glanced up and down the deck. It was totally deserted save for
them. Then, "clad in the beauty of a thousand stars," she leaned over
and down and brushed his hand with her lips.
And George slept on. Only the blare of the bugle brought him back to
mundane affairs. He was hungry, and he announced the fact with gusto.
They would dine well that night. The captain placed Fortune at his right
and George at his left, and broached a bottle of fine old
Johannisberger. And the three of them had coffee in the smoke-room. If
the other passengers had any curiosity, they did not manifest it openly.
Upon finding that they had no real need of staying over in Naples, the
captain urged that they take the return voyage with him. He saw more
than either of the young people, with those blue Teutonic eyes of his.
George promised to let him know within a dozen hours of the sailing.
Certainly Fortune would decide one way or the other within that time.
Both had seen the Vesuvian bay many times, with never-failing love and
interest. They sailed across the bay in the bright clearness of the
morning.
"You are going back with me," George announced in a tone which inferred
that nothing more was to be said upon the subject. But, for all his
confidence, there was a great and heavy fear upon his heart as he asked
for mail at the little inclosure at Cook's, in the Galleria Vittoria.
There was a cable; nothing more.
"Now, Fortune...."
"Have I ever given you permission to call me by that name?"
"Why...."
"Have I?"
"No."
"Then I give you that permission now."
"What do you frighten a man like that for?" he cried. "What I was going
to say...."
"Fortune."
"What I was going to say, Fortune, was this: here is the cable from
Mortimer. I'm not going to open it till after dinner to-night. We'll go
up to the Bertolini to dine. You'll stay there for the night, while I
put up at the Bristol, which is only a little ways up the Corso. I'm not
going to ask you a question till coffee. Then we'll thrash out the
subject till there isn't a grain left."
She made no protest. Secretly she was pleased to be bullied like this.
It proved that among all these swarming peoples there was one interested
in her welfare. But she knew in her heart what she was going to say when
the proper time came. She did not wish to spoil his dinner. She was also
going to put her courage to its supreme test: borrow a hundred pounds,
and bravely promise to pay him back. If she failed to pay it, it would
be because she was dead! For she could not survive a comparison between
herself and her mother. Here in Naples she might find something, an
opportunity. She spoke French and Italian fluently; and in this crowded
season of the year it would not be difficult to find a situation as a
maid or companion. So long as she could earn a little honestly, she was
not afraid. She was desperately resolved.
Such a dinner! Long would she remember it; and longer still, how little
either of them ate of it! She knew enough about these things to
appreciate it. It must have cost a pretty penny. She smiled, she
laughed, she jested; and always a battle to dam the uprising tears.
The dining-room was filled; women in beautiful evening gowns and men in
sober black. But the two young people were oblivious. Their
fellow-diners, however, bent more than one glance in their direction.
Ill-fitting clothes, to be sure, but it was observed that they ate to
the manner born. The girl was beautiful in a melancholy way, and the
young man was well-bred and pleasant of feature, though oddly burned.
Coffee. George produced the cable. It was still sealed.
"You read it first," he said, passing it across the table.
Her hands shook as she ripped the sealed flap and opened the message.
She read. Her eyes gathered dangerously.
"Be careful!" he warned. "You've been brave so long; be brave a little
longer."
"I did not know that there lived such good and kindly men. Oh, thank
him, thank him a thousand times for me. Read it." And she no longer
cared if any saw her tears.
"Bring her home, and God bless you both.
"MORTIMER."
"I knew it!" he cried exultantly. "He and my father were the finest two
men in the world. The sky is all clear now."
"Is it?" sadly. "Oh, I do not wish to pain you, but it is charity; and I
am too proud."
"You refuse?" He could not believe it.
"Yes. But when things grow dark, and the day turns bitter, I shall
always remember those words. I can see no other way. I must fight it out
alone."
Love makes a man dumb or eloquent; and as George saw all his treasured
dreams fading swiftly, eloquence became his buckler in this battle of
love unspoken and pride in arms. Each time he paused for breath, she
shook her head slowly.
The diners were leaving in twos and fours, and presently they were all
alone. Servants were clearing up the tables; there was a clatter of
dishes and a tread of hurrying feet. They noted it not.
"Well, one more plea!" And he swept aside his self-imposed restrictions.
"Will you come for my sake? Because I am lonely and want you? Will you
come for my sake?"
This time her head did not move.
"Is it pity?" she whispered.
"Pity!" His hands gripped the linen and the coffee-cups rattled. "No! It
is not pity. Because you were lonely, because you had no one to turn to,
I could not in honor tell you. But now I do. Fortune, will you come for
my sake, because I love you and want you always and always?"
"I shall come."