Chapter XX The Midway Plaisance
The magic carpet in the Arabian Nights which transported its owner from one country to another, remote, in the space of a few seconds, was the property of all visitors to the Midway Plaisance. Mildred and Jack spent a little time amid the Swiss Alps, the former amusing herself by picking out for Jack’s benefit localities where she and Clover had traveled. Then they looked in at the Bedouin Encampment and saw an old woman making bread. She whirled the dough on one hand until it spread into a very thin sheet. This she flapped over a cushion and from thence transferred it to the top of an inverted iron basin, where it baked above burning sticks. It looked when cooked like a delicate cracker, as it was broken up and passed around to the spectators.
A gigantic black, clothed entirely in red from his high leather boots to the rope-like twists of cloth about his head, lay stretched on a divan beside another fire smoking a narghileh.
“The bread is coming this way,” remarked Mildred apprehensively. “Let us go into that door and see what is there.”
Jack followed her. “This room, Miss Bryant, is taken from a Damascus palace,” he said. “I am surprised that you didn’t recognize it at once. Observe these pieces of silver set into the walls, and the lavish number of mirrors. I believe a periodical lecturer appears in here.”
“How much nicer to have it to ourselves, and guess about it. I have been standing so long, I can guess very closely what these gold-embroidered velvet divans are for,” and Mildred stepped up on the dais at the end of the room and seated herself.
The ceiling was lofty, and in the centre of the room a fountain played. Beyond it was another dais surrounded by divans. The floors were covered with rugs. Outside, two Bedouins fenced with curious swords, the handles wrapped with twine, waving their small brass shields meanwhile with ostentatious gestures as they deliberately stepped about. Increasing in concentration and swift fury to the climax of the play, they paused unexpectedly, and seating themselves on the ground, fell to rolling cigarettes and making coffee over the small fire beside which lay the immobile black.
Shrill and dull arose the rhythm of the flageolets and the tambours. The click of castanets told that the dark-eyed women were dancing.
While Mildred and Jack still rested, an Arab in loose robes came in, and going to the fountain bathed his face and hands and dried them on a purple silk towel striped with yellow.
“How nice of him,” said Mildred, acknowledging this touch added to the picture.
As they were passing out, one of the Bedouins, the cloth from his twisted turban hanging about his shoulders, paused near them with a baby in his arms, a curly-headed tot of a year old, around whose big brown eyes were drawn lines of artificial black. Mildred looked gently upon the child, and the father, smiling with pride and pleasure, glanced from one to the other; so she patted the baby.
“She is very pretty,” she said, and he understood. His large gaze grew soft, and he nodded. Mildred looked at the dancing women with more interest. One of them, her chin tattooed with blue, was pointed out to her as the baby’s mother.
A realization of the probable hardships and homesickness endured by these people in all the changes of scene and weather they had undergone assailed her; but it did not do to dwell too long on that side of life in the Plaisance. She only turned her sweetest smile once more on father and child, patted the baby’s cheek, and followed Jack out.
To him it mattered little where they went. Each scene gained a glamour which, could the managers of the various enterprises have purchased it as a permanent adjunct to their attractions, would have ensured their fortunes. Passing from Arabia to the electric-lighted palms of the Moorish Palace, Van Tassel was prepared to admire everything. The labyrinth of mirrors which might in some moods have impressed him as a tiresome device, now triumphantly vindicated their right to be, by presenting him a hundred Mildreds so like the original as to be an embarrassment of riches. Even the wax figures above stairs were interesting. The rise and fall of the Sleeping Beauty’s gentle breast was a marvel.
From the various tricks and optical illusions of the Moorish Palace they betook themselves to Hawaii, and stood together in darkness on the borders of a lava lake from whose centre shot living flames from the volcano’s heart toward the lurid sky.
A priest, a shadowy figure, came forth among the gray rocks, and chanted a prayer to the dreadful goddess of fire. In the remote distance gleamed the peaceful blue waters of the Pacific. Jack would have been willing to stand for hours here by Mildred, in the weird dusky silence broken only by the monotonous chant, for the longer one lingered the more perfect grew the illusion; but she took him away presently, and in a trice the island of Hawaii had vanished and Egypt was gained via the western entrance to Cairo Street.
They passed in before the Temple of Luxor, in front of which a brazen-lunged American showman was reeling off a highly-colored description of the attractions within.
“Mummy of Rameses about the fifth on your right!” repeated Jack, laughing. “Let us postpone Rameses until he can be located a little more definitely.”
“Yes, I want you to see the Soudanese pickaninny,” said Mildred, and they went over to the tent where the jolly little black baby hopped about among her elders, shaking the girdle of feathers and shells about her hips and dimpling with delight in the applause and laughter she called forth. More interesting than the Soudanese were the Nubians, who came in from the dark huts adjoining, and danced in the same tent. One of these in particular attracted Jack’s eye.
“What a splendid woman, Mildred!” he exclaimed. “What an artist’s model she would make.”
The object of his admiration was tall, straight as an arrow, dressed in a long robe of white, and wore large hoop earrings. She had symmetrical features of haughty mould, and was very dark, with thick crinkled black locks free from the feathers, shells and twine, braided among the Soudanese tresses. She was an impressive figure standing immovable upon the stage among the dancers.
“Like a splendid bronze!” said Jack, gazing at the delicate proud face with all his eyes. The Nubian smiled, disclosing the most perfect teeth imaginable, and Van Tassel regarded her with growing admiration.
“I tell you, Mildred,” he said enthusiastically, “if that woman could have been brought up in a different environment she would have been superb. Fancy having her well-trained for a servant? How would you like her to pass you your coffee at breakfast?”
Mildred laughed. “What a pity that I am not a reporter,” she said as they left the tent. “You could be worked into a taking newspaper article, Jack. A young scion of one of Chicago’s well-known families is maturing a plan to abduct the chief of the tribe of Nubians in Cairo Street. It is feared there will be an uprising, and so forth, and so forth.”
“A feminine chief? I don’t blame them.”
“No, sir. Your superb bronze woman, your artist’s model, is Mohammed Ali, the chief of the Nubians.”
Jack looked incredulous. “You expect me to believe that?”
“Not if you wish to go back and inquire. It is true, though. Mohammed is a friend of mine. He was good enough, when Clover and I looked into his hut, to show us how he polishes those perfect teeth of his with a little stick. Did you ever see anything so shining? You can buy his photograph, if you like, at one of these booths, and keep it as a memento of Mr. Van Tassel’s”—
“Look ou-at. Look ou-at for Mary Anderson,” called a donkey boy in a blue gown.
“You wouldn’t run over me, would you, Toby?” asked Mildred.
The boy trudging by through the crowd, showed his ivories in a smile of recognition, and urged his little white donkey onward in the narrow, crooked, brick-paved street.
Such a throng, such a noise, only the memories of the experienced can witness to. Camels swung along between the irregular houses, the warning cries of their drivers mingling with the monotonous sing-song of the venders in the closely packed booths.
Egyptian flower girls, veiled to the eyes, plied their trade. A conjurer pushed his way amid the gazers, a hen’s egg sticking in his eye and another clinging behind his jaw. The rhythm of the Midway sounded from two drums slung at either side of a gaudily caparisoned camel, and was sung monotonously from the booth of the much-vaunted Oriental sweetmeat:—
“Alla gooda bum-bum,
Vera nice candy,
Beautifula bum-bum,
Vera good candy,”
repeated ad libitum by the swarthy Arab presiding.
Mildred and Jack glanced into the showcases as they passed onward, the former restraining her companion from purchasing specimens of brasswork, filigree silver, ornaments, and embroidery. But once Mildred exclaimed with pleasure over a small hanging-lamp of dull silver.
“I will take it,” said Jack to the instantly voluble salesman.
“Not for me; no don’t,” protested his companion.
“You must have a souvenir,” returned Van Tassel, smiling over the word which had grown hateful by iteration to all Fair-goers.
“Please don’t get it,” said the girl; but the very tassel on their Oriental’s fez was active in his zeal to wrap up the parcel for this gentleman who did not bargain.
The foreign fashion of changing a price by the beating-down process was one with which many Americans amused themselves when they found it was expected; but Jack was in that state of mind when an article which had the rare fortune to please Mildred was above rubies.
She dissembled her satisfaction, however. “If I had let you buy everything you have started to since we came into the street, we should have had to charter a donkey,” she began.
“Look ou-at—look ou-at for Yanka Doodoo,” bawled Achmet, the donkey boy, directly upon them.
“I don’t like to feel that I mustn’t admire anything,” finished the girl as Jack stepped between her and the little quadruped who carried a much-excited and curled maiden of five.
“I like this lamp so much, I don’t know that I shall let you have it,” responded Van Tassel serenely, as he took the package. “Look up, Mildred. What a deep blue the sky gets between those irregular roofs.”
“Only one of us can look up at a time, while the other keeps watch of the menagerie.”
“There appears to be an extra crowd yonder,” remarked Jack.
“Oh, that is the camel-stand. Hear the people laughing. How can anybody be willing to furnish so much amusement to the public as to mount one of those beasts? There is always just such a crowd there.”
“Well, are we through here?” asked Van Tassel.
“What? Are you weary of Cairo Street?”
“Not if you are not; but it is rather warm, and there is a good deal of a mob, and I have inhaled enough attar of roses to last until my next incarnation. I thought perhaps you might be tired, standing.”
“I am.”
“There isn’t a place to sit down, either,” said Jack, looking around.
“That is just what almost every one thinks. I don’t know how soon people will find out my enchanted palace, but they hadn’t done so last week.”
“Well, now, an enchanted palace is exactly what I am looking for,” returned Van Tassel hopefully. “How did you learn the open sesame?”
“The open sesame is”—Mildred paused apologetically. “I am sorry to have to say it, but it is the only prosaic feature,—the open sesame is fifteen cents.”
They moved along toward the crowd by the camel stand, and here in the noisiest, busiest portion of the winding street, Mildred led her companion into an open door which revealed a long, blank corridor. The dragon guarding it was a most commonplace American. Most people whose curiosity led them to look into the uninviting hallway were quickly frightened off by the placard stating the fifteen-cent admission fee. There was so much to see, and time and money were so limited, little wonder that the obvious attractions of the street decided them not to explore this side-show.
Mildred and Jack, leaving the din and bustle behind, pass the easily placated dragon, and at the end of the low, empty corridor found themselves in and open, floored court, out of which led a flight of stairs. A large earthen jar filled with water stood at one side over a smaller vessel into which the water filtered in crystal drops through the porous clay. Palms and lilies stood about, and edged the entire length of the staircase. It was very quiet here, and Van Tassel looked about him curiously.
Mildred gave him a smiling glance of mystery, “Let us go up and see Sayed Ibrahim,” she said.
“Look here,” returned Jack, frowning and smiling, “you are altogether too sophisticated.”
“Sayed doesn’t think so,” answered the girl, and they proceeded upstairs. Entering a hallway where was a heavy bronze door of fabulous age and richness of design, they were met by a tall handsome Oriental in robes and fez, whose melting eyes lighted as they recognized Mildred. He bowed low.
“How do you do, Sayed Ibrahim; I have brought another friend to see the beautiful house.”
He bowed again and held aside a portière of cloth-of-gold. The visitors passed within and found themselves in a spacious shadowy room with lofty arched ceiling. The windows were unglazed and shielded by curious hand-carved lattice work. Thick rugs were upon the floor, and small tables inlaid with pearl and ivory stood about. On a larger one were a number of tiny and precious coffee cups, held in little brass stands. Long-stemmed pipes hung upon the walls, and divans or cushions upon the floor invited to repose. Rich portières divided the suite of rooms one from another.
The light was dim, coming out of the glaring street, and the colors in rugs and hangings were tempered in the wonderful Oriental weaving. There were no other visitors. Jack looked at the swarthy cicerone who stood ready to answer their questions.
“I do not wonder,” he said to Mildred, “that you call this mysterious spot enchanted. It is a chapter out of the Arabian Nights.”
“Yes; are you ready to come back to the nineteenth century? The nineteenth century in Egypt, you know. I wouldn’t make your fall too sudden and profound.”
Mildred moved to the broad window-seat which was covered with a rug, and smiled at the Arab. It was a language he understood as clearly as the Harvard graduate, and he hastened forward and threw open the lattice.
Van Tassel seated himself opposite Mildred, and together they looked down upon the madding crowd.
Their position was just opposite the camel stand, and from their height they commanded a view of the kaleidoscopic life of the street. The bystanders pressed about the cushions upon which the camels knelt to take on or be relieved of their burdens, and seemed to find never-failing entertainment in the behavior of those intrepid passengers who embarked for the adventurous journey to the end of the street and back again.
Mildred and Jack in their romantic eyrie held their sides with laughter over the absurdities enacted before their eyes.
“If any trip ever deserved the name of pleasure exertion, that is the one,” said Mildred, wiping her eyes, while she watched two girls who evidently took their lives in their hands as they seated themselves on the cushioned back of one of the patient beasts. The Arab driver cried out, and tapped the creature on the neck.
“Now then,” said Jack, “see the ship of the desert let out the reefs in its legs!”
Shrieks arose from the maidens at the first ascent, wilder and wilder cries and clutchings at the second and third, and by the time the animal had reached the stature of a camel and swung away, the whole crowd was uproarious, only quieting to observe the next pair embark.
“Miss Amelia Edwards says the camel is a beast that hates its rider,” said Jack. “I wonder what are the private prejudices of the Cairo Street variety.”
“As if you couldn’t see!” answered Mildred. “It wouldn’t be half so funny if the camels didn’t curl their lips and look so supercilious all the time those idiots are shrieking so. ‘What fools these mortals be!’ is the sentiment their faces express chronically. Poor things! Just think, that they are only intended to kneel once or twice a day, and here they have to go down every three minutes. How they would execrate Columbus if they only knew how! Oh, look at that old lady! It is a shame to let her go,” added Mildred. “They will laugh at her, too.”
“Never mind. She will be the heroine of Perkins Point, or wherever it is, all the rest of her life.”
“She looks scared, Jack. Oh, dear! her bonnet is falling off. I wish she wouldn’t. Why, there are Clover and Mr. Page! Do you see them? Let us go out on the balcony.” Mildred left the window-seat, and Jack followed.
“Is there a balcony? Why didn’t you say so?”
“Because I am economical of my pleasant surprises.” The watchful Sayed threw open double doors of the lattice work, and revealed a small, square balcony upon which the visitors stepped into the sunlight. The fanciful minarets and spires of the street gleamed against an azure sky.
Clover and Gorham had paused just below, also interested in the venturesome old lady, who was followed by cheers as her scornful camel bore her up the street.
Jack took advantage of the temporary lull that followed, to whistle the bit from “Carmen.”
Clover instantly looked up and called the attention of her companion.
Mildred beckoned.
“Clover knows the way,” said Jack.
“Most certainly she does. We Chicagoans aren’t Fair visitors. We are Fair livers.”
“Don’t be so toplofty, mademoiselle. What am I, if not a Chicagoan?”
“Oh, a sort of deserter.”
“‘I deny the allegation and despise the allegator.’ I am going to marry a Chicago girl, and live here all my days.”
“Have you asked her?”
Van Tassel, perhaps reminded by the neighborhood of his mentor, forbore from replying to the saucy smiling eyes, and here Clover and Gorham appeared at the door of the balcony.
“Come out,” said Mildred, “it holds five. Is this the way you visit the Anthropological Building?”
“Why, this is all right,” answered Page. “‘Midway Plaisance, Department M. Ethnology.’ Look on the catalogue, and you will see this is all a part of the Anthropological exhibit.”
“And apart from it,” suggested Mildred, “which certainly is in its favor. I thought you would see enough ghastly pictures and graveyards and mummies in a short time.”
“The exhibits in the gallery are wonderful and beautiful,” said Clover. “I don’t believe you know what you are talking about.”
“I do, my dear. I have oh’d and ah’d over them all, from the dainty infinitesimal sea creatures on pink cotton to the mammoth. I felt so much obliged to him. He really made me feel small. Then the realistic cliff, with the birds and beasts artistically disposed, and the waterfall and flowing brook. I’ve seen them. How long have you been here?”
“Not very long. We have been watching the antics of the women on the camels, and the long-legged men on those tiny donkeys.”
“A great deal of human nature comes out in Cairo Street,” said Page with interest. “One sees a great variety of motives, and many grades of self-control by that camel stand. See that little woman going now to take a trip. Is it amusement she’s after? Not at all. Note the determination in her face. Duty calls and she obeys. Dollars to doughnuts she doesn’t scream, Jack.”
“I’m out of doughnuts; but I’ll bet you the supper she does. I haven’t seen a quiet one yet.”
“Done! You will see one now.”
“That girl is from the East,” said Mildred.
“I am sure of it,” returned Page, gazing with pleased curiosity at his protégée, who stood waiting her turn; “but what brings you to that conclusion?”
“The trimming of her hat looks as if it were nailed on. They say all Boston women’s bonnet trimmings are nailed on.”
“She is a character,” said Page. “Now I would like to know what her motive is in riding that camel.”
Jack guffawed. “I am sure you would. You will be asking her the next thing we know.”
“Well, it is no idle one, I’m sure of that.”
“Perhaps she is a school teacher,” suggested Van Tassel, “and wants to go home and tell her scholars how pitch-and-toss in Cairo Street differs from the usual game.”
“There she goes,” said Clover, and they all watched the fair-faced girl approach and mount a camel whose expression for utter boredom rather outdid its neighbors. At the driver’s cry it gathered itself convulsively. The rider lurched forward. Her back was to the watchers on the balcony, but they could not hear a sound from her. She lurched backward, still without a cry, and they were not surprised when the camel swung around to see her face still set in its determined and composed lines while the crowd looked on in silence.
“I shall enjoy that supper very much, Jack,” said Gorham.
“You haven’t won it yet. Wait till she comes back. When his Nibs kneels down is the time a girl’s lungs really come into play. After she thinks every joint in his body has doubled up there comes one unexpected plunge that fetches the most dignified of them every time. They say a sailor came in here the other day and after riding one of our humped friends said that the camel played cup-and-ball with him the whole length of the street, and only missed him twice.”
In a few minutes, back came Gorham’s heroine, still composed as she rocked back and forth clinging to the rope which the driver had handed her for a support.
“Now that supper hangs in the balance,” remarked Page.
“I’m safe enough,” returned Jack nonchalantly, “and I assure you my appetite is in prime condition.”
The camel, slowly winking and holding his nose aloft, approached his cushion, and began the series of spasmodic collapses which made its rider look as though at the mercy of a rocking-chair gone mad. She pitched wildly, but valiantly held her peace. Even Jack had to admit that she did not make a murmur, and all his protests against playing off a dumb girl on him were unheeded as Page gazed benignly down on the young woman, who smiled sweetly and triumphantly as she rejoined her friends.
“Five minutes of four,” said Mildred. “The wedding procession will soon pass. Aren’t we fortunate to have the balcony? Do you see, other people are daring to visit the house and taking our window-seat?”
“Your window-seat! That is pretty good,” said Clover, turning toward the speaker with an arch smile. “We thought that was our window-seat, didn’t we, Jack?”
She saw the color flash over her sister’s face in the instant before the girl controlled herself. She wondered if Jack had seen the novel evidence of feeling before Mildred turned to him coolly.
“So you have been here before,” she remarked. “Why didn’t you mention it?”
“Clover and I looked in a short time only, the evening we took supper in Germany,” answered Van Tassel. “I did not examine the curious place at all then, so this is really my first view of it.”
Clover turned away to conceal her amusement. Jack in his embarrassment had implied all she could have asked from the disciplinary standpoint.
But now the attention of the quartette was claimed by the wedding procession, which was seen coming down the street, the camels nearly hidden under their gaudy, bulky trappings, and the din of the tom-toms filling the air. When the music, dancing, and sword play were ended, Mildred spoke to her sister.
“What have you done with Mr. and Mrs. Page?”
“They went to the Chinese theatre, and we have promised to meet them in Old Vienna and take supper there.”
“Our dear Jack will have to take supper with us now,” declared Gorham cordially.
“I suppose,” said Van Tassel, addressing Mildred, “that Old Vienna is an oft-repeated experience to you?”
“At least I shall not pretend that it is a novelty,” she answered without looking at him, and Jack was silent. He even colored, but it was not with proper contrition. It was a flush of pleasure that overspread his countenance as his brown eyes sent a quick glance into Clover’s.