III
The next day was rainy and cold. Aggie sneezed all day and Tish hadneuralgia. Being unable to go out for anything to eat and the exaltationof the night before having passed, she was in a bad humor. When I gotthere she was sitting in her room holding a hot-water bottle to herface, and staring bitterly at the plate containing a piece of burnedtoast and Tufik's specialty--a Syrian cake crusted with sugar.
"I wish he had drowned!" she said. "My stomach's gone, Lizzie! I ate oneof those cakes for breakfast. You've got to eat this one."
"I'll do nothing of the sort! This is your doing, Tish Carberry. If ithadn't been for you and your habit of picking up stray cats and dogs andOrientals and imposing them on your friends we'd be on the ocean to-day,on our way to a decent climate. The next time your duty to your brotherman overwhelms you, you'd better lock yourself in your room and throwthe key out the window."
Tish was not listening, however. Her eye and her mind both were on thecake.
"If you would eat it and then take some essence of pepsin--" shehazarded. But I looked her full it the eye and she had the grace tocolor. "He loves to make them," she said--"he positively beamed when hebrought it. He has another kind he is making now--of pounded beans, orsomething like that. Listen!" I listened.
From back in the kitchen came a sound of hammering and Tufik's voicelifted in a low, plaintive chant. "He says that song is about thevalleys of Lebanon," said Tish miserably. "Lizzie, if you'll eat half ofit, I'll eat the rest."
My answer was to pick up the plate and carry it into the bathroom.Heroic measures were necessary: Tish was not her resolute self; and,indeed, through all the episode of Tufik, and the shocking denouementthat followed, Tish was a spineless individual who swayed to and frowith every breeze.
She divined my purpose and followed me to the bathroom door.
"Leave some crumbs on the plate!" she whispered. "It will look morenatural. Get rid of the toast too."
I turned and faced her, the empty plate in my hands.
"Tish," I said sternly, "this is hypocrisy, which is just next door tolying. It's the first step downward. I have a feeling that this boy isdemoralizing us! We shall have to get rid of him."
"As for instance?" she sarcastically asked.
"Send him back home," I said with firmness. "He doesn't belong here; heisn't accustomed to anything faster than a camel. He doesn't know how towork--none of them do. He comes from a country where they can eat foodlike this because digestion is one of their occupations."
I was right and Tish knew it. Even Tufik was satisfied when we put it upto him. He spread his hands in his Oriental way and shrugged hisshoulders.
"If my mothers think best," he said softly. "In my own land Tufik isknown--I sell in the bazaar the so fine lace my sister make. I drinkwine, not water. My stomach--I cannot eat in this America. But--I haveno money."
"We will furnish the money," Tish said gently. "But you must promise onething, Tufik. You must not become a Mohammedan."
"Before that I die!" he said proudly.
"And--there is something else, Tufik,--something rather personal. But Iwant you to promise. You are only a boy; but when you are a man--" Tishstopped and looked to me for help.
"Miss Tish means this," I put in, "you are to have only one wife, Tufik.We are not sending you back to start a harem. We--we disapprove stronglyof--er--anything like that."
"Tufik takes but one wife," he said. "Our people--we have but one wife.My first child--it is called Tish; my next, Lizzie; and my next, AggiePilk. All for my so kind friends. And one I call Charlie Sands; and oneshall be Hannah. So that Tufik never forget America."
Aggie was rather put out when we told her what we had done; but aftereating one of the cakes made of pounded beans and sugar, under Tufik'striumphant eyes, she admitted that it was probably for the best. Thatevening, while Tufik took his shrunken and wrinkled clothing to bepressed by a little tailor in the neighborhood who did Tish's repairing,the three of us went back to the kitchen and tried to put it in order.It was frightful--flour and burned grease over everything, every pandirty, dishes all over the place and a half-burned cigarette in thesugar bin. But--it touched us all deeply--he had found an old photographof the three of us and had made a sort of shrine of the clock-shelf--thepicture in front of the clock and in front of the picture a bunch of redgeraniums.
While we were looking at the picture and Aggie was at the sink puttingwater in the glass that held the geraniums, Tufik having forgotten to doso, Tish's neighbor from the apartment below, an elderly bachelor, cameup the service staircase and knocked at the door. Tish opened it.
"Humph!" said the gentleman from below. "Gone is he?"
"Is who gone?"
"Your thieving Syrian, madam!"
Tish stiffened.
"Perhaps," she said, "if you will explain--"
"Perhaps," snarled the visitor, "you will explain what you have donewith my geraniums! Why don't you raise your own flowers?"
Tish was quite stunned and so was I. After all, it was Aggie who came tothe rescue. She slammed the lid on to the teakettle and set it on thestove with a bang.
"If you mean," she said indignantly, "that you think we have anygeraniums of yours--"
"Think! Didn't my cook see your thieving servant steal 'em off the boxon the fire-escape?"
"Then, perhaps," Aggie suggested, "you will look through the apartmentand see if they are here. You will please look everywhere!"
Tish and I gasped. It was not until the visitor had made the rounds ofthe apartment, and had taken an apologetic departure, that Tish and Iunderstood. The teakettle was boiling and from its spout coming a spicyand familiar odor. Aggie took it off the stove and removed the lid. Thegeraniums, boiled to a pulp, were inside.
"Back to Syria that boy goes!" said Tish, viewing the floral remains."He did it out of love and we must not chide him. But we have our ownimmortal souls to think of."
The next morning two things happened. We gave Tufik one hundred andtwenty dollars to buy a ticket back to Syria and to keep him in funds onthe way. And Tish got a note from Hannah:--
_Dear Miss Tish_: I here you still have the dago--or, as my sister's husband says, he still has you. I am redy to live up to my bargen if you are.
HANNAH.
P.S. I have lerned a new salud--very rich, but delissious.
H.
In spite of herself, Tish looked haunted. It was the salad, no doubt.She said nothing, but she looked round the untidy rooms, whereeverything that would hold it had a linen cover with a Cluny-laceedge--all of them soiled and wrinkled. She watched Tufik, chanting aboutthe plains of Lebanon and shoving the carpet-sweeper with a bang againsther best furniture; and, with Hannah's salad in mind, she sniffed awarning odor from the kitchen that told of more Syrian experiments withher digestion. Tish surrendered: that morning she wrote to Hannah thatTufik was going back to Syria, and to come and bring the salad recipewith her.
That was, I think, on a Monday. Tufik's steamer sailed on Thursday. OnTuesday Aggie and I went shopping; and in a spirit of repentance--for wefelt we were not solving Tufik's question but getting rid of him--webought him a complete new outfit. He almost disgraced us by kissingour hands in the store, and while we were buying him some ties hedisappeared--to come back later with the rims of his eyes red fromweeping. His gentle soul was touched with gratitude. Aggie had to tellhim firmly that if he kissed any more hands he would get his ears boxed.
The clerks in the store were all interested, and two or three cash-boysfollowed us round and stood, open-mouthed, staring at us. Neither Aggienor I knew anything about masculine attire, and Tufik's idea was a suit,with nothing underneath, a shirt-front and collar of celluloid, and agreen necktie already tied and hooking on to his collar-button. He wasdazed when we bought him a steamer trunk and a rug, and disappearedagain, returning in a few moments with a small paper bag full ofgumdrops. We were quite touched.
That, as I say, was on Tuesday. Tufik had been sleeping in Tish'sg
uest-room since his desperate attempt at suicide, and we sent histhings to Tish's apartment. That evening Tufik asked permission to spendthe night with a friend in the restaurant business--a Damascan. Tish lethim go against my advice.
"He'll eat a lot of that Syrian food," I objected, "and get sick andmiss his boat, and we'll have the whole thing over again!"
But Tish was adamant. "It's his last night," she said, "and he haspromised not to smoke any cigarettes and I've given him two pepsintablets. This is the land of the free, Lizzie."
We were to meet Tufik at the station next morning and we arranged alunch for him to eat on the train, Aggie bringing fried chicken and Isandwiches and cake. Tish's domestic arrangements being upset, shesupplied fruit, figs and dates mostly, to make him think of home.
The train left early, and none of us felt very cheerful at having to beabout. Aggie sat in the station and sneezed; Tish had a pain above hereye and sat by a heater. We had the luncheon in a large shoebox, wrappedin oiled paper to keep it moist.
He never appeared! The train was called, filled up, and left. Peopletook to staring at us as we sat there. Aggie sneezed and Tish held hereye. And no Tufik! In a sort of helpless, breakfastless rage we called ataxicab and went to Tish's. No one said much. We were all thinking.
We were hungry; so we spread out the shoebox lunch on one of theCluny-lace covers and ate it, mostly in silence. The steamer trunk andthe rug had gone. We let them go. They might go to Jerusalem, as far aswe were concerned! After we had eaten,--about eleven o'clock, Ithink,--Tish got up and surveyed the apartment. Then, with a savagegleam in her eye, she whisked off all the fancy linens, the Cluny laces,the hemstitched bedspreads, and piled them in a heap on the floor. Aggieand I watched her in silence. She said nothing, but kicked the whole lotinto the bottom of a cupboard. When she had slammed the door, she turnedand faced us grimly.
"That roll of fiddle-de-dees has cost me about five hundred dollars,"she said. "It's been worth it if it teaches me that I'm an old fool andthat you are two others! If that boy shows his face here again, I'llhand him over to the police."
However, as it happened, she did nothing of the sort. At four o'clockthat afternoon there was a timid ring at the doorbell and I answered it.Outside was Tufik, forlorn and drooping, and held up by main force by atall, dark-skinned man with a heavy mustache.
"I bring your boy!" said the mustached person, smiling. "He has greattrouble--sorrow; he faint with grief."
I took a good look at Tufik then. He was pale and shaky, and his newsuit looked as if he had slept in it. His collar was bent and wilted,and the green necktie had been taken off and exchanged for a raggedblack one.
"Miss Liz!" he said huskily. "I die; the heart is gone! My parent--"
He broke down again; and leaning against the door jamb he buried hisface in a handkerchief that I could not believe was one of the lot wehad bought only yesterday. I hardly knew what to do. Tish had said shewas through with the boy. I decided to close them out in the hallwayuntil we had held a council; but Tufik's foot was on the sill, and themore I asked him to move it, the harder he wept.
The mustached person said it was quite true. Tufik's father had died ofthe plague; the letter had come early that morning. Beirut was full ofthe plague. He waved the letter at me; but I ordered him to burn itimmediately--on account of germs. I brought him a shovel to burn it on;and when that was over Tufik had worked out his own salvation. He was atthe door of Tish's room, pouring out to Aggie and Tish his grief, andoffering the black necktie as proof.
We were just where we had started, but minus one hundred and twentydollars; for, the black-mustached gentleman having gone after trying tosell Tish another silk kimono, I demanded Tufik's ticket--to beredeemed--and was met with two empty hands, outstretched.
"Oh, my friends,--my Miss Tish, my Miss Liz, my Miss Ag,--what must Isay? I have not the ticket! I have been wikkid--but for my sister--onlyfor my sister! She must not die--she so young, so little girl!"
"Tufik," said Tish sternly, "I want you to tell us everything thisminute, and get it over."
"She ees so little!" he said wistfully. "And the body of myparent--could I let it lie and rot in the so hot sun? Ah, no; Miss Tish,Miss Liz, Miss Ag,--not so. To-day I take back my ticket, get themoney, and send it to my sister. She will bury my parent, and then--shecomes to this so great America, the land of my good friends!"
There was a moment's silence. Then Aggie sneezed!