“Weren’t any of them happy?”
He began enumerating. The first one had been young and inexperienced; she had not been properly brought up and did not know her position as his wife. Although she had cost him a hundred dollars, he had dispatched her to her parents because she was too independent. Number two had not been clean and had been too old for his mother to train; he had made amicable arrangements with her father for her return, and had lost no money on this transaction. Number three had been sickly, and a great expense; she also had gone back. Number four had not loved him; it had been shortly evident her heart was with another man and the agreement had been broken by mutual consent. Number five, the latest, he had sent home because she would not wait on his mother.
“Why should she?”
“Madam, my mother carried me in her belly for nine months. Should I have a wife who would not work for her after that?”
He was now casting about for his sixth.
Ali haunted our footsteps and, in order to collect his five percent commission on all our purchases, noted every place we went. Merchants made a social affair of their customers’ calls. You went to a perfume shop in the Bazaar. The proprietor said, “Yes,” sat down, and handed you a gold-tipped, aromatic cigarette. He lighted it for you, took out a pile of letters from a bag, and opened them for your inspection. They were testimonials that a certain gentleman had sent similar cigarettes to Hartford, Connecticut, or Pelham, New York. Of course, you bought some. Then a cup of Persian tea was brought you, and you wanted some of that. At last you recalled that you had come for attar of roses. By this time he had sensed your “aura” and knew what you could pay. He was willing humbly to mention the price.
Our tour had been a wonderful experience for Grant. He had studied the Baedekers, planned our trips when we were coming to a new city or country, looked into their histories and, although he was only thirteen, shown a highly awake and intelligent attitude towards everything we had seen.
He had had all sorts of wares hurled at him—ostrich feathers, fans, baskets, sapphires, scarabs. He was satiated with strange sights and lore—Buddha’s Temple of the Tooth at Kandy, caravans of bullocks, the English club at tiny Port Swettenham in Malaya, the enormous porters of Egypt who picked up trunks as though they were handbags, women veiled and women unveiled, mosques, the Coptic church where Joseph and Mary were supposed to have hidden Jesus from Herod, the date trees along the road to Memphis, the underground Temple of the Bull, the remains of an old proud world at Alexandria where Cleopatra had once held court, the primitive ferry-raft on which we had crossed the Nile to see the place where Moses had been found in the bullrushes, the wonderful ride, weird and lovely, across the Sahara to view the Pyramids and Sphinx. On his way to Switzerland he had traveled by gondola along the canals of Venice, had been trailed through the art galleries of Milan.
After a few weeks at Montreux Grant was fully recovered, but he was now homesick for the first time since we had left New York eight months before. All he wanted was to see Tilden play in the tennis matches at Wimbledon, and then go home. Because I did not think he should miss the reception which H.G. was giving, I had him fly across the Channel to London, and afterwards, appreciating his longing to be among his own age and kind, I shipped him off on the maiden voyage of the Majestic to a camp in the Poconos. By the time he was back at Peddie he was up with his class, his mind vastly enriched, and able to approach his studies in a more mature manner. I have never regretted taking him with me.
I myself remained in London for the Fifth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference to be held July 11–14. The inclusion of the words birth control was a definite concession on the part of the Neo-Malthusians to the new trend of thought. It was a delight to be amid conditions where tolerance reigned and the atmosphere was unblighted by legal restrictions. The scientific candor of the discussion was reported in the newspapers with sincerity and sobriety.