When Aggie realized that Tish had gone, she was rather upset--she depends a great deal on Tish--and she took another of the little gla.s.ses of milky stuff to revive her.
I was a little bit nervous with Tish gone and the sun setting and another tub of beer bottles brought in--though the people were orderly enough and Tufik stood near. But Aggie began to feel very strange, and declared that the man with the sheepskin drum was winking at her and that her head was twitching round on her shoulders. And when a dozen or so young Syrians formed a circle, their hands on each other"s shoulders, and sang a melancholy chant, stamping to beat time, she wept with sheer sentiment.
"Ha! Hoo! Ta, Ta, Ta!" they chanted in unison; and Tufik bent over us, his soft eyes beaming.
"They are shepherds and the sons of shepherds from Palestine," he whispered. "That is the shepherd"s call to his sheep. In my country many are shepherds. Perhaps some day you go with me back to my country, and we hear the shepherd call his sheep--"Ha! Hoo! Ta, Ta, Ta!"--and we hear the sleepy sheep reply: "Maaaa!""
"It is too beautiful!" murmured Aggie. "It is the Holy Land all over again! And we should never have known this but for you, Tufik!"
Just then some one near the door clapped his hands and all the noise ceased. Those who were standing sat down. The little girl with the broom swept the acc.u.mulations of the room under a chair and put the broom in a corner. The music became loud and stirring.
Aggie swayed toward me. "I"m sick, Lizzie!" she gasped. "That paregoric stuff has poisoned me. Air!"
I took one arm and Tufik the other, and we got her out and seated on one of the wooden steps. She was a blue-green color and the whites of her eyes were yellow. But I had little time for Aggie. Tufik caught my hand and pointed.
Tish"s machine was coming down the alley. Beside her sat Tufik"s sister, sobbing at the top of her voice and wearing Aggie"s foulard, a pair of cotton gloves, and a lace curtain over her head. Behind in the tonneau were her maid of honor, a young Syrian woman with a baby in her arms and four other black-eyed children about her. But that was not all. In front of the machine, marching slowly and with dignity, were three bearded gentlemen, two in coats and one in a striped vest, blowing on curious double flutes and making a shrill wailing noise. And all round were crowds of women and children, carrying tin pans and paper bags full of parched peas, which they were flinging with all their might.
I caught Tish"s eye as the procession stopped, and she looked subdued--almost stunned. The pipers still piped. But the bride refused to move. Instead, her wails rose higher; and Aggie, who had paid no attention so far, but was sitting back with her eyes shut, looked up.
"Lizzhie," she said thickly, "Tish looks about the way I feel." And with that she fell to laughing awful laughter that mingled with the bride"s cries and the wail of the pipes.
The bride, after a struggle, was taken by force from the machine and placed on a chair against the wall. Her veil was torn and her wreath crooked, and she observed a sulky silence. To our amazement, Tufik was still smiling, urbane and cheerful.
"It is the custom of my country, my mothers," he said. "The bride leave with tears the home of her good parents or of her friends; and she speak no word--only weep--until she is marriaged. Ah--the priest!"
The rest of the story is short and somewhat blurred. Tish having broken her gla.s.ses, Aggie being, as one may say, _hors de combat_, and I having developed a frightful headache in the dust and bad air, the real meaning of what was occurring did not penetrate to any of us. The priest officiated from a table in the center of the room, on which he placed two candles, an Arabic Bible, and a sacred picture, all of which he took out of a brown valise. He himself wore a long black robe and a beard, and looked, as Tish observed, for all the world as if he had stepped from an Egyptian painting. Before him stood Tufik"s sister, the maid of honor with her baby, the black-mustached friend who had brought Tufik to us after his tragic attempt at suicide, and Tufik himself.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The real meaning of what was occurring did not penetrate to any of us]
Everybody held lighted candles, and the heat was frightful. The music ceased, there was much exhorting in Arabic, much reading from the book, many soft replies indiscriminately from the four princ.i.p.als--and then suddenly Tish turned and gripped my arm.
"Lizzie," she said hoa.r.s.ely, "that little thief and liar has done us again! That isn"t his sister at all. He"s marrying her--for us to keep!"
Luckily Aggie grew faint again at that moment, and we led her out into the open air. Behind us the ceremony seemed to be over; the drum was beating, the pipes screaming, the lute thrumming.
Tish let in the clutch with a vicious jerk, and the whir of the engine drowned out the beating of the drum and the clapping of the hands.
Twilight hid the tin cans and ash-barrels, and the dogs slept on the cool pavements. In the doorways soft-eyed Syrian women rocked their babies to drowsy chants. The air revived Aggie. She leaned forward and touched Tish on the shoulder.
"After all," she said softly, "if he loves her very much, and there was no other way--Do you remember that night she arrived--how he looked at her?"
"Yes," Tish snapped. "And I remember the way he looked at us every time he wanted money. We"ve been a lot of sheep and we"ve been sheared good and proper! But we needn"t bleat with joy about it!"
As we drew up at my door, Tish pulled out her watch.
"It"s seven o"clock," she said brusquely. "I am going to New York on the nine-forty train and I shall take the first steamer outward bound--I need a rest! I"ll go anywhere but to the Holy Land!"
We went to Panama.
Two months afterward, in the dusk of a late spring evening, Charlie Sands met us at the station and took us to Tish"s in a taxicab. We were homesick, tired, and dirty; and Aggie, who had been frightfully seasick, was clamoring for tea.
As the taxicab drew up at the curb, Tish clutched my arm and Aggie uttered a m.u.f.fled cry and promptly sneezed. Seated on the doorstep, celluloid collar shining, the brown pasteboard suitcase at his feet, was Tufik. He sat calmly smoking a cigarette, his eyes upturned in placid and Oriental contemplation of the heavens.
"Drive on!" said Tish desperately. "If he sees us we are lost!"
"Drive where?" demanded Charlie.
Tufik"s gaze had dropped gradually--another moment and his brown eyes would rest on us. But just then a diversion occurred. A window overhead opened with a slam and a stream of hot water descended. It had been carefully aimed--as if with long practice. Tufik was apparently not surprised. He side-stepped it with a boredom as of many repet.i.tions, and, picking up his suitcase, stood at a safe distance looking up.
First, in his gentle voice he addressed the window in Arabic; then from a safer distance in English.
"You ugly old she-wolf!" he said softly. "When my three old women come back I eat you, skin and bones,--and they shall say nothing! They love me--Tufik! I am their child. Aye! And my child--which comes--will be their grandchild!"
He kissed his fingers to the upper window which closed with a slam.
Tufik stooped, picked up his suitcase, and saw the taxi for the first time. Even in the twilight we saw his face change, his brown eyes brighten, his teeth show in his boyish smile. The taxicab driver had stalled his engine and was cranking it.
"Sh!" I said desperately, and we all cowered back into the shadows.
Tufik approached, uncertainty changing to certainty. The engine was started now. Oh, for a second of time! He was at the window now, peering into the darkness.
"Miss Tish!" he said breathlessly. No one answered. We hardly breathed.
And then suddenly Aggie sneezed! "Miss Pilk!" he shouted in delight. "My mothers! My so dear friends--"
The machine jerked, started, moved slowly off. He ran beside it, a hand on the door. Tish bent forward to speak, but Charlie Sands put his hand over her mouth.
And so we left him, standing in the street undecided, staring after us wistfully, uncertainly--the suitcase, full of Cluny-lace centerpieces, crocheted lace, silk kimonos, and embroidered bedspreads, in his hand.
That night we hid in a hotel and the next day we started for Europe. We heard nothing from Tufik; but on the anniversary of Mr. Wiggins"s death, while we were in Berlin, Aggie received a small package forwarded from home. It was a small lace doily, and pinned to it was a card. It read:--
For the sadness, Miss Pilk!
TUFIK.
Aggie cried over it.
THE SIMPLE LIFERS
I
I suppose there is something in all of us that harks back to the soil.
When you come to think of it, what are picnics but outcroppings of instinct? No one really enjoys them or expects to enjoy them, but with the first warm days some prehistoric instinct takes us out into the woods, to fry potatoes over a strangling wood fire and spend the next week getting gra.s.s stains out of our clothes. It must be instinct; every atom of intelligence warns us to stay at home near the refrigerator.
Tish is really a child of instinct. She is intelligent enough, but in a contest between instinct and brains, she always follows her instinct.