The Carpet from Bagdad

"Horace, old top, what's the use? We'd just like to be good if we could; eh? But they won't let us. We'd grow raving mad in a monastery. We were honest at the time, but we couldn't stand the monotony of watching green olives turn purple upon the silvery bough. Nay, nay!"

He pushed the glass away from him and studied the air-bubbles as they formed, rose to the surface, and were dissipated.

"No matter what the game has been, somehow or other, they've bashed us, and we've lost out."

He emptied the glass and ordered another. He and the bartender were alone.

"After all, love is like money. It's better to live frugally upon the interest than to squander the capital and go bankrupt. And who cares, anyhow?"

He drank once more, dropped a half-sovereign upon the table, and pushed back his chair. His eyes were bloodshot now, and the brown of his skin had become a slaty tint; but he walked steadily enough into the reading-room, where he wrote a short letter. It was not without a perverted sense of humor, for a smile twisted his lips till he had sealed the letter and addressed the envelope to George Percival Algernon Jones. He stuffed it into a pocket and went out whistling The Heavy Dragoons from the opera Patience.

Before the lighted window of a shop he paused. He swayed a little. From a pocket of his new coat he pulled out a glove. It was gray and small and much wrinkled. From time to time he drew it through his fingers, staring the while at the tawdry trinkets in the shop-window. Finally he looked down at the token. He became very still. A moment passed; then he flung the glove into the gutter, and proceeded to his own hotel. He left the letter with the porter, paid his bill, and went out again into the dark, chill night.

He was now what he had been two months ago, the man who didn't care.

CHAPTER XIX

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."

CHAPTER XX

MARCH HARES

George, in that masterful way which was not wholly acquired, but which had been a latency till the episodic journey – George paid for the dinner, called the head-waiter and thanked him for the attention given it, and laid a generous tip upon the cover. From the dining-room the two young people, outwardly calm but inwardly filled with the Great Tumult, went to the manager's bureau and arranged for Fortune's room. This settled, Fortune went down to the cavernous entrance to bid George good night. They were both diffident and shy, now that the great problem was solved. George was puzzled as to what to do in bidding her good night, and Fortune wondered if he would kiss her right here, before all these horrid cab-drivers.

"I shall call for you at nine," he said. "We've got to do some shopping."

A tinkle of laughter.

"These ready-made suits are beginning to look like the deuce."

"Do you always think of everything?"

"Well, what I don't remember, the clerk will," slyly. "Till recently I believe I never thought of anything. I must be off. It's too cold down here for you." He offered his hand nervously.

She gave hers freely. He looked into her marvelous eyes for a moment. Then he turned the palm upward and kissed it, lightly and loverly; and she drew it across his face, over his eyes, till it left in departing a caress upon his forehead. He stood up, breathing quickly, but not more so than she. A little tableau. Then he jammed his battered fedora upon his head and strode up the Corso. He dared not turn. Had he done so, he must have gone back and taken her in his arms. She followed him with brave eyes; she saw him suddenly veer across the street and pause at the parapet. It was then that she became conscious of the keenness of the night-wind. She went in. Somehow, all earth's puzzles had that night been solved.

George lighted a cigar, doubtless the most costly weed to be found in all Naples that night. The intermittent glowing of the end faintly outlined his face. Far away across the shimmering bay rose Capri in a kind of magic, amethystine transparency. A light or two twinkled where Sorrento lay. His gaze roved the half-circle, and finally rested upon the grim dark ash-heap, Vesuvius. Beauty, beauty everywhere; beauty in the sky, beauty upon earth, in his heart and mind. He was twenty-eight, and all these wonderful things had happened in a little more than so many days!

"God's in His heaven,All's right with the world!"

He flung the half-finished cigar into the air, careless as to where it fell, or that in falling it might set Naples on fire. It struck a roof somewhere below; a sputter of sparks, and all was dark again.

"I shall come." All through his dreams that night he heard it. "I shall come."

Next morning he notified the captain to retain their cabins. After that they proceeded to storm the shops. They were like March hares; irresponsible children, both of them. What did propriety matter? What meaning had circumspection? They two were all alone; the rest of the world didn't count. It never had counted to either of them. Certainly they should have gone to a parsonage; Mrs. Grundy would prudently have suggested it. The trivialities of convention, however, had no place at that moment in their little Eden. They were a law unto themselves.

Into twenty shops they went; modiste after modiste was interviewed; and Fortune at length found two models. These were pretty, and, being models, quite inexpensive. Once, George was forced to remain outside in the carriage. It was in front of the lingerie shop. He put away each receipt, just like a husband upon his honeymoon. Later, receipts would mean as much, but from a different angle of vision. He bought so many violets that the carriage looked as though it were ready for the flower carnival. He laughingly disregarded her protests. It was the Song of Songs.

"My shopping is done," she said at last, dropping the bundles upon the carriage floor. "Now, it is your turn."

"You have forgotten a warm steamer-cloak," he reminded her.

"So I have!"

This oversight was easily remedied; and then George sought the tailor-shops for ready-made clothes. He had more difficulty than Fortune; ready-made suits were not the easiest things to find in Naples. By noon, however, he had acquired a Scotch woolen for day wear and a fairly decent dinner suit, along with other necessities.

"Well, I say!" he murmured, struck by a revealing thought.

"Have you forgotten anything?"

"No. On the contrary, I've just remembered something. I've got all I need or want in my steamer-trunk; and till this minute I never once thought of it."

How they laughed! Indeed, so high were their spirits that they would have laughed at any inconsequent thing. They lunched at the Gambrinus, and George mysteriously bought up all the pennies from the hunchback tobacco vendor. Later, as they bowled along the sea-front, George created a small riot by flinging pennies to small boys and whining beggars. At five they went aboard the ship, which was to leave at sundown, some hours ahead of scheduled time. The captain himself welcomed them as they climbed the swaying ladder. There were a hundred first-class passengers for the final voyage. The two, however, still sat at the right and left of the captain; but the table was filled, and they maintained a guarded prattle. Every one at once assumed that they were a bridal couple, and watched them with tolerant amusement. The captain had considerately left their names off the passenger-list as published for the benefit of the passengers and the saloon-sitting. So they moved in a sort of mystery which rough weather prevented being solved.

One night, when the sea lay calm and the air was caressingly mild, George and Fortune had gone forward and were leaning over the starboard-rail where it meets and joins the forward beam-rail. They were watching for the occasional flicker of phosphorescence. Their shoulders touched, and George's hand lay protectingly over hers.

"I love you," he said; "I love you better than all the world."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure? Can you doubt it?"

"Sometimes."

"Why…"

But she interrupted him quickly. "In all this time you have never asked me if I love you. Why haven't you?"