FullReads

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 principals–and then suddenly Tish turned and gripped my arm.

“Lizzie,” she said hoarsely, “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 muffled 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 repetitions, 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.