Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 137.djvu/244

238 Next day the sheikh appeared, I represented to him the impossibility of my boarding and lodging his step-son indefinitely, and asked him whether he could not protect him. He said he could as long as he himself was in the village, but not during his absence. I suggested sending the culprit off to the Hauran. He said that in that case his wife, the youth's mother, would follow her son. As he seemed to speak of this contingency with regret, I suggested that she should be sent for to meet her husband in my house, and a reconciliation should be effected. He said he desired nothing more. So I sent for the old lady, but she declined to come. I now began to feel that I was getting so deeply immersed in Druse domestic relations, that I was becoming confused by them. But there was the lad still in the kitchen, and his bloodthirsty stepbrothers outside, and something had to be done. Finally, the sheikh said that he thought that if the young man went to stay with a Christian of my acquaintance at Esfia he would be safe, and he himself would not be heartbroken if his mother chose to follow him there, and that when the storm blew over he could come back. So he was packed off to Esfia. The mother did not follow him, but, for some reason best known to herself, remained in hiding for some days. Whenever I asked where she was, I was told vaguely "in the woods." When she did reappear, she took up her abode with the spiritual sheikh, and is always very glad to come and do a day's work for me – drying figs, making mud-plaster, and so forth – whenever I can provide her with work. Meanwhile, the sheikh her husband comes and calls, and sips his coffee, and complacently regards his better-half thus earning her living by drudgery without honouring her with his notice. He has a grown-up daughter by this wife, to whom he seems much attached, and who appears to divide her affections with great impartiality between her estranged parents. What puzzles me is – but I have not ventured to ask the question – why, with divorce so easy, they continue to live on these terms. The old spiritual sheikh, who is a most venerable and charming old man, though not without his faults, was not deterred in early life from following the prevailing custom: he had also divorced his wife; and her successor is what would be called in America the "boss" woman of the village. No tones so shrill, no language so abusive, no energy so indomitable as hers; she is the head and front of every row, and was especially active in behalf of her daughter-in-law's family. But she has a warm heart and generous nature, and is untiring in her efforts to render me some service in return for the one I rendered her in saving her son from the conscription, and indeed, if I would only let her, would gladly undertake the management of my whole household, and slave herself to death, without any other recompense than that which she would derive from the constant exercise of authority. During the first weeks of my residence here, she and her whole family invaded my back premises to that extent that I was obliged to place restrictions on their visiting, or rather trespassing, propensities. Still the whole village seems to consider the place common property. They take a great pride and interest in all our little efforts at beautification and landscape-gardening, being much puzzled