The morning after Easter, Edith returned to her studies with a light
heart. She was full of joy about the new hospital. Furthermore the
personal had begun to run in the newspapers, and she would keep it there
till it met Elsie’s eye, if it took five years and each year cost her an
Easter dress and a summer vacation. She would see this thing through.
Once more, as she bent above her microscope, God seemed to be answering
her. The nucleus of every cell divided with a purpose, even if with
no other than that of distributing the chromosomes equally among the
daughter cells, and beyond that she was willing to trust God. She even
became rather enthusiastic about pushing the physico-chemical theory of
life to its logical conclusion. Even if somebody should actually find the
formula, somewhere among those frightfully complex colloids, no formula
could explain the spiritual effort by which it was found.
Tuesday evening, April 21, she was at home, and reading Haldane on
respiration. He thought it inexplicable by mechanics, and she agreed, but
she was looking for flaws in the argument, and quite willing to trip him
up.
Then the door opened, and Bobbie bowed with exaggerated politeness.
“Aunty Highbrow, telephone wants you.”
Five minutes later, Drummond’s excellent Swedish chauffeur was startled
out of his evening smoke. And thirty minutes later he had been dismissed
by Miss Bridgman, with the information that she would not be home till
morning.
They were sitting together—Edith and Elsie—on the couch in Elsie’s front
room, and their arms were intertwined as completely as the mechanics of
the situation would permit.
“I’ve read that personal every day for nine days and I just couldn’t
stand it any longer.”
“I’m terribly glad that you couldn’t.”
“He’s a foreigner, Edith. And enough like Marie to be her brother.”
“Most of us are foreigners. Has he gone back home?”
“Yes, he went yesterday.”
Elsie disengaged her left hand and held it before Edith’s eyes. “You see,
I haven’t disgraced you. That ring is as real as anybody’s.”
Another kiss, ending with a sigh of relief. “I’m not heroic, Elsie. I was
perfectly certain you had no ring, and I couldn’t make up my idiot mind
whether to blame you or not.”
“Now don’t you scold yourself, Edith Bridgman. I’ve just been living on
your convictions.”
“Why, didn’t he want to marry you?”
Elsie laughed. “It was too funny. I had refused to promise you, and he
had refused to promise a man friend of his. But we talked about you—and
wanted to please you both. We—we knew you two were older. Where do you
think we met?”
“At a socialist meeting, of course.”
“No! At a dance hall.”
“Elsie Shaviro Somebody, I’m ashamed of you. I must kiss you again to
prove it.”
“Thank you, ma’am. If I can’t be kissed by my husband, you are the next
best. But I was desperate, Edith. I didn’t care what I did. And I went
one evening, and it made me sick. There wasn’t a decent man or girl in
the place. I was standing to one side when he came through the gate and
took a look. I said to myself, Who are you, my young Napoleon Bonaparte?
Then something slid up to him and spoke to him. He reached out his finger
and touched her lips. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I might get some on my face.’ She
slapped him on the cheek and she said, ‘You’re no gentleman.’ He moved
his head up and down and said, ‘You have Browning pistol of eye, kiddo.
You have shot me up for fair.’ She giggled and took him by the arm.
‘Maybe you don’t think I’m onto you. Browning is a poet. Do you think
I’ve got some eyes?’ He looked sober right away. Then he said, ‘When I
monkey with slang, it sometimes turns out buzz-saw. I mean you shoot
straight when you say I am no gentleman; but you, kiddo, are just poor
pitiful she configuration of élan vital. Now go away quick.’ She looked
at him, and moved off. Then he took out his handkerchief and wiped his
forehead, and saw me looking at him.”
Elsie stopped, evidently lingering over a happy moment.
“Who spoke first?”
“He did. He walked straight up to me, and he said, ‘Miss Eyeglasses, I
want to dance. I do not know anybody. My name is Saadi.’ I said, ‘My
name is Elsie, and I want to dance, too.’ We moved out on the floor, and
we danced till we reeled. I don’t think we said one word. We had been
waiting for each other a thousand years.”
“Didn’t you even discuss élan vital?”
“No. It was weeks before I understood. I didn’t even know it meant vital
impulse. And I had never seen the word ‘Saadi’ before. That’s a Persian
word.”
“Yes. Persian and Jewess! It’s a real romance.”
“He isn’t exactly a Persian, though he speaks Persian as perfectly as
you speak English. He comes from Bokhara. It wouldn’t have made any
difference if he had come from the North Pole. He’s the noblest man that
ever lived.”
Edith reached out her foot and touched the magnificent red rug. “You
evidently know about Bokhara now. That’s a beauty.”
“Isn’t it! He ransacked the whole town for eastern things. That coffee
set over there, with the cunning little cups and the long curving brass
spout, came from Bosnia. He knows all about the Balkans. Oh, maybe I
haven’t learned things!”
“It’s hard to take it all in, Elsie. Does your mother know? Were you
married by the rabbi?”
“My folks know all about it now. Mother was here to see me this morning.
She can’t get over the fact that I was married by a justice of the peace,
but she’s taking it pretty well. My father is tickled to death that it
isn’t worse. He telephoned me about an hour ago that Moslem is a whole
lot better than Monzerim.”
“I’m sure it is, Elsie. But ‘monzerim’ is beyond me.”
“It means illegitimates, Edith. Mother—mother explained to me this
morning why I’ve been so miserable lately.”
She hid her face on Edith’s breast, and the scarred hand held the dark
head close. “Bless your dear heart, girlie! Bless your dear heart.”
Elsie clung to her—crying a little—tears of joy. “Just think, Edith—just
think—my dream will come true. It is sure to be a boy.”
“A fighter for the workers,” murmured Edith. “Have you seen a doctor?”
“No.”
“Will you let me send you one?”
“I’ll do anything you say. I want everything to be all right.” She lifted
her face and brushed away the happy tears. “I want my boy to be strong
and beautiful, like his father.”
She arose and brought a photograph, and Edith studied it. “It is a very
unusual face, Elsie. But what long eyes, looking out of the corners. Did
you never mistrust him the least bit?”
“Never! His simplest word—why, I’d take my husband’s word against all the
bibles in the world. He was always joking, and I did enjoy it so, for I
could never make a joke. But when Saadi says he’ll do a thing, he’ll do
it even if the sky tumbles down. Yes, and if it tumbled down, he’d catch
the birds on his shoulder and pet them.”
“Does he know who’s coming?”
Elsie shook her head. “He never dreamed. And I can’t telegraph him,
because I don’t know what steamer he is taking to-morrow. But he will be
the gladdest man in Asia when he gets my letter. If I may see your doctor
to-morrow, I’ll write to-morrow night. Who is your doctor, Edith?”
Edith hesitated. “Bobbie had a specialist. But I will send you our family
physician, Dr. Rowland. I’ll telephone when he can come, and you can have
your mother here to meet him. But for goodness’ sake, don’t wait about
writing. Do it now, and I’ll mail it when I go out in the morning.”
“All right. But I must go to my bedroom to write, all by my little self.”
And away she went. She was gone for fifteen minutes, while Edith availed
herself of the opportunity to pull her wits together, and study the
face of Elsie’s husband. Something about the brow made her think of
Trench. But there was no resemblance to the doctor’s clear, steady gaze.
Presently Elsie returned, radiant at a good task performed, and placed
in Edith’s hands the letter, addressed to Mr. Saadi Sereef, Grand Hotel,
Tashkent, Turkestan, Russia. Edith put it in her handbag, and they sat
down together again.
“Oh, I’m so happy,” sighed Elsie. “And it is so nice to feel that I can
pay the doctor. My husband is rich—that is, he seems rich to me after
what I’ve gone through. He left me five hundred dollars in gold, and I’ve
got a bank account. His father is some sort of nobleman. They call him a
Beg.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Edith. “Perhaps that is why he is so much interested in
politics.”
“Perhaps. I’m making a big scrapbook of the clippings he collected,
though I can’t read half of them. He had a dozen foreign papers sent
here, and he’d sit over there and use the shears, and sort of rub his
teeth together in tune with them. I can tell you just how much every
nation in the world spent on its navy last year. I can tell you the gold
reserve in every capital. Saadi is the most practical revolutionist I
ever met.”
“I inferred as much, my dear. You said he was like Marie. But I supposed
Marie to be very poor.”
“That’s true, but lots of revolutionist girls are rich, Edith, and of
noble blood. Saadi is the son of a nobleman, but he was in the Russian
revolution. As soon as he gets to Tashkent he is going to take a hand in
politics again. I don’t know just what he’s going to do. It is dangerous,
but I told him I would be ashamed of him if he didn’t do his duty. I’m
not worrying. Nothing will happen to him—he’s too full of resources. And
some day he will probably be prime minister of Bokhara, for he is a great
friend of the present Emir.”
Edith caught her breath. A terrible suspicion was slowly forcing the door
of her heart, as the veiled figure in Watts’s picture forces its way past
the broken-winged love.
Elsie did not notice her agitation. “And then,” continued the girl, “we
shall go to Bokhara to live, and I shall be a great lady. Wouldn’t that
make you smile, Edith Bridgman? From Ischl’s clothing factory to the
palace of Kermineh! But there shall be no nonsense. Saadi and I are both
radicals, though he hasn’t much faith in Marx, and we’ll make things hum
in Central Asia.”
Edith fought the dreadful sinking sensation within her. She rose and
moved round the room, examining here a picture and there a vase, with
little mechanical exclamations, as of pleasure. Elsie rose and joined
her, and took her through all the rooms of the flat. Had the girl been
already a princess in Bokhara, she could have shown no more pride in her
palace. Gradually her friend recovered herself. Whatever her doubts, this
was not the time to disclose them.
They returned to the front room. “Oh, it’s so good to think that you’re
going to stay all night. Saadi wasn’t here more than half the time. He
is studying medicine, and couldn’t let on to his friends that he was
married.”
More darkness spreading across the horizon, but Edith held her peace, and
sent up a little prayer for a level head.
“And now, Edith dear, don’t let’s talk any more for a while, but have
some music. It’s a perfectly splendid instrument, and I’m going to play
you the first two pieces he brought me. You see, I took a little room by
myself right after I first met him, and he had the instrument sent there.
That was when you lost track of me. If I had known you a little better,
I’d have had you come and chaperon me, but I always thought of you as
with me, dear beautiful woman.”
A lump rose in Edith’s throat, and down went her head on Elsie’s
shoulder, as if she were begging forgiveness for something. But when
Elsie presently proceeded to play Korsakoff’s “Scherazade,” and then
Bird’s “Oriental Sketch,” sorrow returned. She understood only too well
how the spell of enchantment had fallen upon Elsie in those first days.
The man had technically respected her unprotected condition, but he had
led her into a fool’s paradise with that subtle, jasmine-sweet music. As
the strains ceased, Edith felt that Elsie was very unlikely to see her
husband again.
“You say he has gone to Bokhara, dear. What called him home? Was it the
politics?”
“I didn’t quite say he had gone to Bokhara. Didn’t you notice the address
I wrote on the letter? Tashkent was his mother’s home, and it is about
fifteen hours’ ride from Bokhara. His mother has died, and he has to go.”
“Does her dying make any difference to his prospects?”
“Yes. Saadi gets all her money. The poor little socialist girl is going
to have money to burn.”
“Why didn’t his mother live in Bokhara?”
“There was some trouble. She was separated from her husband. Saadi didn’t
seem to think much of his father, but what do I care, so long as he
thinks the whole world of me?”
She sprang up and brought a half-dozen new records, each in its brown
paper cover. “Select something more to play, Edith. Oh, here’s the thing.
This is the Servian national song, ‘Rise, Servians, Rise.’ It makes you
rise all right. Listen!”
She slipped the record into place, and the sprightly military music
began. She swayed to it. She began to march alertly through the room.
“You should have seen us do this together! He knew the words, and we used
to march up and down till the people below rapped on the steam-pipe and
we had to be good.—What’s the matter, Edith? Don’t you like such things
Sunday evening? I always forget that you’re a Christian.”
Edith smiled, at least with her lips. “I suppose I’m tired. I didn’t have
any supper. Will you make me a cup of tea?”
“Will I? I’m awful to forget a thing like that. Why, you poor little rich
girl, I’ve got an ice box full of goodies for you. And we’ll have supper
right away. No—you aren’t going to help. You sit right there and look
at the new records, and pick out something for a tired girl. There’s a
lovely one over there somewhere—the last he brought me. It’s called ‘Good
night, little girl, good night,’ but I haven’t played it since he went,
for it makes me cry.”
Elsie disappeared into the kitchen, and Edith sat perfectly still, gazing
at the Bokhara rug, which was red as if with old blood.
Son of a prince—medical student—clandestine marriage—prime minister—dead
mother—heir to fortune! It was all a clear case of humbug and treachery.
Little had Helena guessed how truly Edith would have to “specialise in
desertion.”
Elsie’s voice rang out from the kitchen. “Why don’t you play it?”
“In a minute,” answered Edith. She shuffled the records and found the
one desired. She took it out and carried it to the instrument and set it
in place, though it looked like a great thin passover cake, the charred
symbol of Elsie’s sacrifice. A rich baritone began to sing, “I’ve told
you the story you asked me to tell.” A father was giving his little
daughter a good-night blessing. Edith listened grimly.
“The world is so wide, dearie,
True friends are so rare, dearie,
Who knows what danger may wait for you there!
No matter how well we have guarded the fold,
The wolves will come in somewhere.
But rest you and slumber, and dream if you will,
You’re safe this night, I know—”
She shuddered as the tender words were breathed. To have given Elsie that
song as a farewell gift was a bit of oriental cruelty worthy of Satan
himself. She slowly clenched her hands, and became aware that one of
them was holding the slip from which she had taken the record.
As she smoothed out the heavy brown paper, she extracted from it a piece
of lighter colour, apparently the memorandum of sale. No—no! What stared
at her! She had a quick eye for that word of words.
Cetinje, April 15, 1914.
Saadi Sereef Dr. Trench, Halsted St., Chicago.
bsvd