Anna Alice Chapin

“ The next day, Pippa Carpenter stood on the deck of the great steamboat that plied between the coast and the purple East. They were passing out through the Golden Gate, that incomparable portal of possibilities. Behind her throbbed San Francisco; she seemed still able to smell the strange, aromatic scent of California trees and flowers and Chinese joss sticks and opium, even though her nostrils were filled, actually, with nothing but the salt, clean tang of the breeze-swept ocean.
Oh, blue past belief! A blue as vital and fresh as the sky itself ”

“ To go to the Presidio—say those who know and love it—means to pass through the loveliest park in the world. California green has a spectrum all its own; there is a yellow-green and a blue-green and a green that is almost purple-brown, and a number of gradations of old rose and sea color and emerald, and so many other shades that no mere mortal can properly grade them. No mere mortal save one, that is. Pippa knew that the man who had planned the green color scheme of the Presidio grounds had made a complete study and art of it. ”

“ All left to me are two grandsons, whose father was my son, and they are in this land. But there is that which I must carry to Egypt, or send by a trusty messenger; and I am poor, and may not hire a carrier. Honest men, madame knows, cost money!”
Perhaps it was this unconsciously cynical aphorism that appealed to Pippa; perhaps it was the fantastic quality of the idea that had come to her; perhaps it was nothing but genuine pity for the old man. At all events, she gave a little nod as if in decision, and walked up to the scowling young man. ”

“ She could not analyze the thing, but every morning, as she woke to the blazing blue and gold of a perfect California day, and every night as she got out warm things to protect herself from the cold sea fog that rolled, in great puffs, from the ocean, she seemed to understand it a little better. ”

“ Pippa gasped.
“And it is that,” she said, “that I am to carry to Muktar?”
“It is that!” cried Mohammed Ali fervently. “And if madame will but say a prayer for my wicked soul—a prayer to Allah that I may now begin life again——”
“A prayer to Allah!” repeated Mrs. Carpenter, slightly abashed. Then she added quickly and gently: “Of course, Mohammed Ali; I will say a prayer to Allah for you in the mosque at Muktar.”
“Madame,” said the Arab earnestly, “if you will go to the house of Yusuf-Amid, the perfume seller in the bazaar of Muktar, you will be welcomed and housed as one of his own. ”

“ He spoke humbly, yet insistently, as if something within him were urging him past his native respect and unobtrusiveness, on toward some goal greatly to be desired.
“Where is it that you wish to go?” she asked gently.
“To Egypt!” It was a sort of subdued cry.
A party of young women had come in, and were trying to talk to the scowling booking clerk all at once. No one paid the slightest attention to Mrs. Carpenter or to the Arab.
“And you want to go so much?”
“It is not that I want to go, madame,” he said, sighing heavily. “I am an old man, and all of my people are dead. ”

“ For but lately I have been warned in a dream that while I hold the stolen treasure, I shall never know joy, but that if I return it to its rightful place, I may die without fear, and my grandsons may live in plenty. ”

“ Pippa flung out her hands with a wild little gesture.
“You don't understand!” she said. “Men have loved me—a great many men. I have even loved men—a few. But the rest of my life has been waiting—waiting for something that could never be.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“I tell you, you don't understand!” she repeated, with a choking breath. “I-I have been drawn to men for a thousand different reasons—pity, passion, friendship, respect, impulse! I cared once for a man who was divinely tender to me—and I tired of him. There was a man who hurt me, body and soul, whose every touch was fire and pain ”

“ But you, madame, you will listen to the silence of the desert, and see the colors that the sky has at sundown. I would I were you, madame—and yet I would not! For I am old, and I doubt not that the dream I dream of it would, after all these years, prove untrue at the last! Allah is good! As we pass on to the farther end of life, we are given many dreams and ghosts for company.”
Pippa wondered a little at the phraseology of the man, till she remembered that even the camel drivers of the Far East may have an aptitude for the metaphysical, the indirectly poetic, the picturesque. ”

“ But she got no help. The scowling young man had turned to scowl at somebody else.
This was a stout, comfortable-looking little man, with an air of bustling and conscious importance. Pippa recognized him at once as the energetic traveler who had wanted to “take a look at the Golden Gate.” ”

“ The sharp dash of commercialism only heightened the savor; even smuggling catches a fresh sparkle from business competition. And if one studied the Celestial merchants as they unloaded their heiroglyphiced bales and boxes on the wharves and pondered over mysterious invoices, one might get some picturesque side lights on, for instance, the suffering of the Chinese importers since the Mexican coinage went out. ”

“ When a beautiful, red-haired lady, wearing an exceedingly expensive violet gown and a huge bunch of rare flowers, blows into your office and explains vaguely that she wants to go somewhere in the East, but doesn't care where, you may reasonably conclude that there is something the matter with her. ”