He turned him forth into the night.
And now, weak and fumbling, Ibn stood there for a time, wondering where else to turn. He was so weak that at last even the zest for search or to satisfy himself was departing. For a moment, a part of his old rage and courage returning, he threw away the pice that had been given him, then turned back, but not along the street of the bazaars. He was too distrait and disconsolate. Rather, by a path which he well knew, he circled now to the south of the town, passing via the Bet-el-Fakin gate to the desert beyond the walls, where, ever since his days as a pack servant with the Bedouins, he had thought to come in such an hour. Overhead were the stars in that glorious æther, lit with a light which never shines on other soils or seas. The evening star had disappeared, but the moon was now in the west, a thin feather, yet transfiguring and transforming as by magic the homely and bare features of the sands. Out here was something of that beauty which as a herdsman among the Bedouins he had known, the scent of camels and of goats’ milk, the memory of low black woolen tents, dotting the lion-tawny sands and gazelle-brown gravels with a warm and human note, and the camp-fire that, like a glowworm, had denoted the village centre. Now, as in a dream, the wild weird songs of the boys and girls of the desert came back, the bleating of their sheep and goats in the gloaming. And the measured chant of the spearsmen, gravely stalking behind their charges, the camels, their song mingling with the bellowing of their humpy herds.
“It is finished,” he said, once he was free of the city and far into the desert itself. “I have no more either the skill nor the strength wherewith to endure or make my way. And without khat one cannot endure. What will be will be, and I am too old. Let them find me so. I shall not move. It is better than the other.”
Then upon the dry, warm sands he laid himself, his head toward Mecca, while overhead the reremouse circled and cried, its tiny shriek acknowledging its zest for life; and the rave of a jackal, resounding through the illuminated shade beyond, bespoke its desire to live also. Most musical of all music, the palm trees now answered the whispers of the night breeze with the softest tones of falling water.
“It is done,” sighed Ibn Abdullah, as he lay and wearily rested. “Worthless I came, O Allah, and worthless I return. It is well.”
VII
TYPHOON
Into a singularly restricted and indifferent environment Ida Zobel was born. Her mother, a severe, prim German woman, died when she was only three, leaving her to the care of her father and his sister, both extremely reserved and orderly persons. Later, after Ida had reached the age of ten, William Zobel took unto himself a second wife, who resembled Zobel and his first wife in their respect for labor and order.
Both were at odds with the brash gayety and looseness of the American world in which they found themselves. Being narrow, sober, workaday Germans, they were annoyed by the groups of restless, seeking, eager, and as Zobel saw it, rather scandalous young men and women who paraded the neighborhood streets of an evening without a single thought apparently other than pleasure. And these young scamps and their girl friends who sped about in automobiles. The loose, indifferent parents. The loose, free ways of all these children. What was to become of such a nation? Were not the daily newspapers, which he would scarcely tolerate in his home longer, full of these wretched doings? The pictures of almost naked women that filled them all! Jazz! Petting parties! High school boys with flasks on their hips! Girls with skirts to their knees, rolled-down stockings, rolled-down neck-bands, bare arms, bobbed hair, no decent concealing underwear!
“What—a daughter of his grow up like that! Be permitted to join in this prancing route to perdition! Never!” And in consequence, the strictest of rules with regard to Ida’s upbringing. Her hair was to grow its natural length, of course. Her lips and cheeks were never to know the blush of false, suggestive paint. Plain dresses. Plain underwear and stockings and shoes and hats. No crazy, idiotic finery, but substantial, respectable clothing. Work at home and, when not otherwise employed with her studies at school, in the small paint and color store which her father owned in the immediate vicinity of their home. And last, but not least, a schooling of such proper and definite character as would serve to keep her mind from the innumerable current follies which were apparently pulling at the foundations of decent society.
For this purpose Zobel chose a private and somewhat religious school conducted by an aged German spinster of the name of Elizabeth Hohstauffer, who had succeeded after years and years of teaching in impressing her merits as a mentor on perhaps as many as a hundred German families of the area. No contact with the careless and shameless public school here. And once the child had been inducted into that, there followed a series of daily inquiries and directions intended to guide her in the path she was to follow.