Chapter VBARON MUGGURDITCH THOMASSIAN

"In the purple twilight under the sea"

of conscious thought, made this very grateful to him, and joined it with what were like the first heavenward thoughts and prayers of a little child.

So time passed on. But, as he grew stronger, there awoke again within him a vague sense of want and longing. He had no power to express his feelings, but he felt something was wrong withhim—he was not in his proper place. Or was it, rather, that there was something wrong with all the people about him? They were very kind; but they and their ways had a queer, distorted, unnatural look in his eyes, like the things one sees reflected in the bowl of a spoon. He longed continually, longed inexpressibly, for something he could not get, for some one who was not there; yet he could not tell who it was he wanted.

He grew silent and melancholy, and his friends thought him in danger of another relapse, which would certainly have been fatal. Happily, it was now autumn again, the sultriest months of the year being over. So one day they wrapped him up carefully, seated him comfortably on cushions upon a donkey, and brought him with them, to a vineyard which Hohannes possessed on a slope of one of the hills above Biridjik. He was a man of some property, having flocks and herds also. The great, luscious grapes, "as large as plums," purple, green, and amber, hung in ripe profusion, nearly breaking down the low bushes they grew upon. Jack ate of them to his heart's content, and lay in the pleasant shade of a fig-tree, watching the other young people as they gathered them for their various uses. Tents had been brought, and it gave him a kind of dreamy satisfaction to sleep in one of these; it seemedsomehow to bring him nearer to the things he had lost, and was vaguely feeling after. Often hints of them seemed to flash on him unbidden, but when he tried to grasp them vanished as they came, leaving him confused and faint, with a fluttering heart and an aching head.

However, his strength improved in the cooler air and amidst the new surroundings. He had soon an opportunity of testing it. One day he happened to be by himself, resting under his favourite fig-tree, when he heard a noise as of something trampling and tearing the vines. Looking up, he saw that a flock of goats had got in among them, and were doing terrible damage, not only to the ripe fruit but even to the trees. He got up and called for help, but no one heeded, and he supposed no one heard. It was dreadful to see all this harm done; in fact, he could not endure it. Taking heart, he went to the rescue himself, or rather, for the first time since his illness, heran. His steps were unsteady, his limbs shook under him; once indeed he fell, but he was up and on again in a moment. The exercise seemed to give back strength to his muscles and vigour to his brain. He shouted aloud; he took up stones and flung them at the trespassers, sending them flying over the low stone wall. Then, the Englishman's joy of battle waking in him,he gave chase as fast, or faster, than his limbs would carry him.

He heard the others crying out to him; but he thought they were encouraging his efforts. Even when they came running up with evident intent to stop him, he thought they were only afraid he would do himself harm. But at last the youngest son of Hohannes caught him bodily in his arms, shook the stones out of his hand, and cried breathlessly, "You mustnot! You mustnot!"

Jack had a good deal of Armenian by this time. "Inchu? Inchu?—Why? why?" he gasped; "they were destroying your vines."

The young man, by name Avedis, or "good tidings," looked sadly at the injured trees, but only said, "Those goats belong to the Kourds."

Jack stammered in his eagerness to find the words he wanted. "What has that to do with it?" he got out at last. "What right have the Kourds to spoil your vines?"

"Don't you know, Yon Effendi, that if we dare to stop them doing it, or even to drive their sheep and goats out of our fields and vineyards, they think a great deal less of stabbing or shooting one of us than you would of killing a cat?"

"But then they would be hanged for it!" cried Jack. "Have you no—oh, what is the word forit?—have you no—police?" He said the word in English, and a rush of old, new thoughts and impressions came crowding into his brain.

"Police?"

"The men who keep order, and take people to prison."

"Do you mean the zaptiehs? They are worse than the Kourds. The Turk and the Kourd are the upper and the nether millstone, grinding us to powder. If one of us is fool enough to complain of a Kourd or a Turk, the Kamaikan—the governor, I mean—says he will enquire into the matter. And he does. He sends for the man who has complained, throws him into a dungeon, and keeps him there till he confesses all the wrong is on his own side; or perhaps until his people pay a sum of money. Or perhaps he may be never heard of again at all."

Avedis did not say this with fierce looks and indignant gestures, but in a calm, matter-of-fact way, as if such things were part of the everlasting order of nature, which has been from the beginning and will be until the end. Jack did not follow every word; but one thing he understood very clearly: they must all stand still and see their beautiful vines destroyed. There was no remedy—why? Because this was not England.England!Now he knew everything. He wasan English boy, left alone here in this strange land. And his father—where was his father? "Where is my father?" he cried aloud in English.

"What is that you say?" asked Avedis.

Jack repeated his question in Armenian.

"Come and sit down under the tree," said Avedis.

Jack obeyed, silent and trembling. Avedis stood, looking at him sadly. "Tell me, where is my father?" Jack repeated with pleading eyes, into which a new expression was dawning slowly.

"You know, Yon Effendi, you have been very ill," Avedis said. "Your father, a great English Effendi, very wise and good, was ill too. You recovered; your father did not recover. He is gone to God. Do you understand me, Yon Effendi?"

Jack understood so well that he flung himself face downwards on the ground, and burst into a passion of weeping. In vain Avedis tried to comfort him. "God forgive me," he thought, "I ought not to have told him. I fear I have killed him." And he certainly had not acted up to the meaning of his name. The rest of the family blamed him severely, when they heard what he had done. It was the custom of their country for the bearer of sad tidings to go about his task with great circumlocution, carefully "breaking" them, as we say in England.

Yet the shock, instead of killing John Grayson,brought him back to his true life. Up to this there had been a serious danger that his brain would never wholly recover the shock of that long and terrible illness; and that, if he lived, he might go through the future years as one whose mind had an important leaf left out of it. But that day's agony of weeping, and the days and nights of distress that followed it, meant that he would either die, or else recover wholly, and claim his intellectual inheritance in the present and the past. This full recovery, however, might well be an affair of time—perhaps of a long time.

Old Hohannes heard with the rest that the English youth knew now that his father was dead, and that he was weeping and refusing comfort, in a manner very likely to make him ill again. "We will take him back to the town," he said; and so they did the next day.

The following morning Hohannes took him by the hand, led him into a low, dark room on the ground-floor, where bulghour and rice were stored, and shut and barred the door.

"Sit down," he said. Jack did so; and looked on wonderingly while the old man dug a hole in the ground with some implement resembling a trowel.

At last he grew impatient, and asked, "Will you not tell me about my father?"

Hohannes looked up. "There is not much to tell," he said. "Feeling himself, no doubt, very ill, the English Effendi sent for me, and I came. He asked me to take care of you, and if you should recover to try and send you back to your friends in England. And he gave me, to use for you as I thought best, the things I have kept hidden here. He spoke somewhat also of certain papers, but before he could finish what he wanted to say, the fever increased upon him, and his mind began to wander. As to the papers, we never got them. They were stolen away, with his other baggage, by the two Syrian servants, who were brothers, and precious rascals. But these I have." He stooped and took out of the hole something wrapped in a skin and tied with cords. These he carefully unfastened, took off the skin, and revealed two books and a belt of chamois leather. The books he gave to Jack, who recognised, with a thrill of joy and a pang of sorrow, the pocket Bible his father always carried with him, and the note-book in which he used to see him write. "Keep these thyself," said Hohannes. "This," holding up the belt, "I must keep still. There is gold in it." Instinctively his voice dropped lower, though there was none to hear the dangerous word.

"I am very glad of it," Jack said frankly, as, for the first time, it occurred to him that thesepeople, upon whom he had no claim, had been providing for all his wants. "Father Hohannes, you and yours have fed and tended me all this time like a child of your own. It ought to be all yours!"

"You have a generous heart, Yon Effendi. And, in fact, I have used it for you as far as was necessary and just. There were medicines and other things when you were ill, and there was the tax to pay for you."

"The tax for me?" Jack repeated. "What tax?"

"Know you not we have to pay, year by year, every man and boy among us, for breathing the air? Even for the new-born babe the Turk exacts it. So your tax had to be found along with our own, and will be next year also. Moreover I own, a piece or two went to the Kourds as backsheesh, that they might let our cattle alone."

"Indeed, father," Jack said again, "I wish you would take it all; it is yours by right."

Hohannes shook his head. "And what, then, if you should want to go home?" he said; "or if any way for your doing it should open? Moreover we dare not, for our lives, let any one know we have so much gold in the house. The Kourds would come down from the mountains and rob us, or the Turks would take it from us onpretence of arrears of taxes. It is best for me to keep it here for you. You see where I put it?"

"Yes, Father Hohannes; it is all right," said Jack.

He was longing to go away somewhere by himself, and feast his eyes on his father's handwriting, and on the printed words he loved so well. But, as he was going, a thought came to him that made him turn again. Things which he had heard Kevork say as he began to get better, and which at the time he had scarcely noticed, came to his mind with a sudden inspiration.

"Father Hohannes," he said, "Kevork, your grandson, longs sore to go to Aintab, to the great school the Americans have set up there for your people. Kevork loves learning very much. May he not take some of this gold and go?"

Again Hohannes shook his head. "Kevork is a foolish boy," he said. "The cock that dreamed of grain fell from his perch trying to scratch for it. Let him stay at home, and mind the cattle; or take to the weaving, if it like him better." Jack was sorry for Kevork, but the possession of the precious books drove everything else out of his head. He flew upon the spoil; nor was it with a passing joy alone, since during the time that followed the chief sustenance of his life, thatwhich made it worth living, came from these books.

He was himself again, but only a childish, weak, discouraged self—a different being from the strong, active-minded, energetic lad who had come with his father to Biridjik. His illness and its consequences had thrown him back in his development of body, of mind, and still more of character, for at least a couple of years. He was quite unable at present to look his life in the face, or to take the initiative in any way.

Nor was there any one about him who could give him effectual help. How to go to England was a problem no one in Biridjik seemed able to solve. Even a letter was a difficult and doubtful undertaking. It is true the town possessed a Turkish post-office, but this, at all events for foreign letters, was a perfect "tomb." In answer to his questions, his friends told him of a certain "Cousin Muggurditch," a kinsman of Hohannes, who lived at "Yeatessa," but was a great traveller, going sometimes even as far as Constantinople;—he could send a letter safely to England. Jack thought Yeatessa was the place his father wanted to go to, and which was mentioned in his note-book as Edessa, the city of the legendary King Agbar. His friends assured him it was; that they knew all about it, and that the storyof King Agbar was quite true, for his tomb was still to be seen just outside the city, which the Franks called Urfa, and which was only two days' journey from Biridjik.

"I shall go there some time," Jack said; but he said no more about it, and it seemed as if for the time all thought of change had passed out of his mind. He slipped into the life and the ways of those about him. Even his European clothes were out-worn or out-grown, and he adopted the striped zeboun, the gay jacket and the crimson fez of the Armenians. Mariam Hanum (Mrs. Mary) took care of his wardrobe, and he might be seen every Saturday going with the other men and youths to the bath, and carrying his clean clothes with him tied up in a towel.

One day he wanted a kerchief to put under his fez and keep off the sun, and he went by himself to the shop to buy it. He came back with one of bright green, which he thought very handsome; but, to his amazement, Kevork snatched it from his head and Avedis flung it into the fire, with the approval of all the rest.

"Don't you know that green is the Moslem colour?" they said to him.

"Then be sure I will never wear it," Jack answered; "I am a Christian."

He went with his friends to the GregorianChurch on Sundays and feast days; often too in the early mornings before sunrise, or in the evenings at sunset. It is true he did not understand very much of the service; but the Armenians themselves were scarcely better off, as the ancient Armenian language is still used in the liturgy of the national Church. He was shown, in the adjoining graveyard, the resting-place of his father, marked like all the other graves with a flat stone. Then he printed carefully, in English capital letters, his father's full name, and gave it to the best stonecutter in the town, asking him to engrave it for him, with a cross.

"I should like it put upon another stone," he said; "one to stand up, as we have them in England."

The stonecutter explained that he could not have it here. It was unlawful. Mahometans had their tombstones erect, but a Christian might only mark the resting-place of his dead with a flat stone. "But," the man added with a smile, "that will not hinder our rising again at the last day."

Kevork and his brothers continued Jack's greatest friends. Kevork talked much with him, and told him many things. He said he should like to go to Yeatessa, or Urfa, because he had a sister there.

"A married sister, I suppose?" Jack said, rather wondering he had not heard of her before.

"No," said Kevork, lowering his voice mysteriously. "My grandfather had to send her away to our cousins, because the Kamaikan who was here before this one wanted to marry her; and we never talk of her, not even before Gabriel and Hagop, lest any word might slip out about where she is, and the Turks might overhear. But I had rather go to Aintab than even to Urfa, to learn English and Greek and Latin, and grammar and geography, and all kinds of science."

"And what then?" Jack asked with a smile.

"Then I would go, if I could, to America or to England, learn still more, and become at last a famous professor in some grand college in a Christian land."

Kevork had already learned from a friendly priest, Der Garabed, to read and write Armenian, and to read Turkish in the Arabic character. For the Turks, and it is a significant fact, have never reduced their own language to writing; their books are printed either in the Arabic or in the Armenian character. He was in raptures when Jack offered to teach him English, which he promptly began to do, using as a text-book his father's Bible, the only book he had, with the exception of a Tauchnitz "Westward Ho," whichhappened to be in his pocket when he came to Biridjik. In return, Kevork taught him to read and write Armenian, and these lessons were shared by Gabriel and Hagop. Gabriel was a remarkably quick, intelligent boy, all life and fire; Hagop was quiet and rather dull, more at home at his father's loom than at his brother's book. Both used to listen delightedly to Jack, when, chiefly as an exercise for himself, he would translate some simple Bible story aloud in Armenian.

Not that such were the only uses Jack made of his father's Bible. Outwardly his character still continued unformed, boyish, passive; inwardly it had begun silently to grow and to deepen. He did not act, but he thought a great deal. His mind was like a stream flowing underground, gathering volume as it flowed, and sure to emerge again to the light of the upper world. Its sources were fed by observation, memory, faith, and hope, and most of all by that matchless fount, not only of spiritual but of intellectual inspiration, the English Bible.

"Warbling still amidst the others,Wandering with them where they roam,And yet hallowing remembrance,With low gushes about home."

"Warbling still amidst the others,

Wandering with them where they roam,

And yet hallowing remembrance,

With low gushes about home."

No doubt some subtle form of nervous weakness, the relic of his long and terrible illness, still held young John Grayson in its grasp. Moreover the loss of his father, so intensely loved, had entered like iron into his soul. His mother's death was still, when he left home, a recent bereavement, and he was an only child. He had no near relatives except in his uncle's family, and even amongst them there was only one he cared for much, his father's godson, a cousin five years his senior, whose fag he had been at school.

What had he, after all, to go back to in England? He excused his torpor with thoughts like these, whenever it occurred to him to ask himself if he meant to spend his life tending vines,teaching English, and studying Armenian, in a little out-of-the-way town on the banks of the Euphrates.

He spent many months there without taking much note of time. The Meneshians were his family; the whole Armenian community his friends. He entered more and more into their life, shared more and more their interests. He was especially interested in the culture of the vineyard, wanting to know the how and the why of everything. Once—but this was in early days—he proposed taking Kevork and a couple of other lads with him, and going to stay there long before the regular vintage time. "We could guard it a great deal better," he said, "than that lazy Turk, who does nothing but lie all day on his perch smoking cigarettes, and is always wanting backsheesh."[1]

"You could not do it at all," answered Boghos, the eldest son of Hohannes, and the husband of Mariam Hanum, "just because you are not a Turk. Backsheesh is very well spent in setting the Turk to watch the Kourd, instead of both of them preying upon us. Do you not know that yet, Yon Effendi?"

They all continued to give him that name, which he had taught in the first instance to Kevork and his brothers. To them all he was a cross between a pet and plaything to be taken care of, and a superior person to be honoured. In both capacities he had every attention, and all his wants were liberally supplied. But he insisted that Hohannes should expend for that purpose some of his father's gold, and should give from time to time a small sum by way of compensation to Boghos and Mariam Hanum, with whom he lived. Money was so scarce in that region that a very small sum sufficed.

At last one day the whole Meneshian family, and indeed the whole Armenian quarter of Biridjik, was thrown into excitement by the news that Baron Muggurditch Thomassian (in English, Mr. Baptist Thomson), was about to honour them with a visit. He was travelling from Urfa to Aintab, and proposed staying a day or two on his way with his kinsfolk, the Meneshians.

Jack shared in the excitement. He was very curious to see this wealthy, travelled, educated Armenian, whom he expected to find of a very different type from the simple folk of Biridjik. And now, at last, he was sure to find through him the opportunity of communicating with his friends in England, which, however little eagerness hemight feel in the matter, he knew he ought not to neglect.

What could the duteous and admiring kinsfolk of Baron Thomassian do on the occasion, except pay him the attention of riding "three hours distance" to meet him on his way, even although it was midwinter, the rains heavy and the wretched road ankle-deep in mud? Boghos led the party, and Jack went among the rest. Old Hohannes had a few fine horses, of which he was very proud; and he had given one of them to Jack, to his immense delight and satisfaction.

In that district there is scarcely any snow, and the rain had happily cleared off, so it was only a splashed and muddy, and not a drenched and soaking company that drew up by the wayside in the shelter of a little hill, to await the coming of the travellers.

At last the jingling of mule bells announced the approach of the caravan. There was a long string of khartijes, or muleteers, there were some servants on horseback, and a few zaptiehs to act as guards. These were fully armed of course, and the central figure of the whole, Baron Thomassian himself, rode a very fine horse, and actually carried a gun at his side, for which he must have got a special "permit" from the government. He was a good-looking middle-aged man, dressedà la Frank, orin complete European costume, except that he wore a fez in place of a hat, which was amongst the things forbidden to an Armenian.

There was something else which gave all the Biridjik folk a great surprise. Beside him rode a slight young girl, closely wrapped in a long "ezhar" of striped silk, which was drawn as a veil over the greater part of her face, leaving very little of it visible except her large, beautiful, dark eyes. Veiled though she was, Boghos recognised his daughter, and Kevork at least guessed his sister. Scarce, for looking at her, could they give their kinsman the customary greeting, "Paré yejock" (your coming is a joy), or wait for the response, "Paré dessack" (we see you with joy). And Thomassian hastened to say, "I have brought your daughter back to you at the request of your cousin, Baron Vartonian. I will explain the reason afterwards." Then Boghos kissed his daughter on both cheeks, and she kissed his hand and asked for his blessing. Kevork kissed her also; and Jack, keeping modestly in the background, thought what a pleasant thing it must be to have a sister. He had already seen lovely faces among the girls and women of Biridjik, but never, as he thought, eyes quite so soft and dark, lips quite so rosy, and cheeks of such perfect form and hue.

All the rest, who were old acquaintances, came crowding round her; and then Boghos turned his attention to Jack, and made him known to Thomassian, with much polite observance, as their English friend, John Grayson Effendi.

They rode back together to Biridjik, Boghos devoting himself to the entertainment of Thomassian. Jack could not help wondering that they all showed so little pleasure at the return of Shushan; on the other hand, a sort of constraint and gloom seemed to brood over the whole party. Kevork would give him no explanation. Even when he said, "I am surprised to see your sister looking so young. She seems scarcely fourteen. I thought, of course, from what you told me, that she must be older than you." Kevork only answered, with a quick, guarded look around, "She was but ten years old when she left us."

After the festive supper in honour of the guest, Thomassian explained the matter in private to Hohannes and to Boghos.

"Your former Kamaikan, Mehmed Ibrahim," he said, "has come to Urfa. He has got some good office there in the Government. Somehow he found out that Shushan was there with the Vartonians, and—he has not forgotten. In short, she must go. There was no other way."

"Amaan!" or "Oh dear!" was all her fathersaid. But he looked perplexed and sorrowful, seeing trouble before them all.

Hohannes put the trouble into words. "He may find out, and send after her here."

"The Vartonians thought not. You must keep her as close as you can, or send her in disguise to one of the villages."

"How dare we—for the Kourds? A bride on her way from the church was carried off the other day from Korti, and the bridegroom and her father, who tried to defend her, were both killed. Our girls are not safe anywhere, except in their graves." Though they sat within closed doors, they all spoke in low tones, and with furtive glances around them.

"Our only possible protection," Thomassian said, "lies in the wealth our abilities and our industry enable us to gain. The Turks and Kourds consider our peace and safety marketable properties, which they are willing to sell us at a good price."

"Yes," said Hohannes sadly, "until they find we have nothing more to give, or until it suits them to take all together."

Thomassian, who probably did not much care to talk on these matters, said that he was weary with his journey, and expressed a wish to go early to rest.

Kevork had been hanging about watching for an opportunity of speaking with him, and now, as soon as the door was opened, he came forward, offering politely to attend him to his sleeping-place.

A little later he came quickly, and evidently in much excitement, into the room where Shushan was sitting, with her mother and several other women and girls of the household, who had come in to see her.

"Mother, I have done it!" he cried.

"Done what, my son?" asked his sad-faced mother.

She was sitting, as usual, behind her wheel, but its whirr was silent now. She had enough to do in looking in the face of Shushan, and holding her hand.

"I have made a conquest of old Cousin Muggurditch," said Kevork triumphantly. "He will take me with him to Aintab, and put me to the Foreigners' School."

A murmur of surprise ran round the room. But his mother asked, with some shrewdness,—

"What did you give him?"

"What you gave me, mother. I owe all to you. It was those gold coins that did it."

The other women looked significantly at Mariam. The strings of gold coins which she wears abouther person are the Armenian woman's only absolute and indisputable possession. They stand to her instead of settlements and dowry. That must be precious indeed for which she will sacrifice them.

"He made little of the coins at first," said the quick-witted lad; "but that was all in the way of business. I could see that he thought a good deal of them, and liked well to get them."

"How much did you sell them for?" asked Mariam.

"I did not sell them. Not such a fool as that! I mean you to have them again some day, mother. I only gave them in pledge to him—he promising to advance my school expenses—until I should be able to repay him."

"But that is for ever and ever," said one of the women.

"Nothing of the sort. After two years at Aintab I shall be a teacher, and able to earn money for myself."

Here Shushan looked up and spoke. She was very beautiful; not only with the beauty characteristic of her race—soft dark eyes, black pencilled eyebrows almost meeting, long curling eyelashes, and olive-tinted, regular features—but with the rarer loveliness of a sweet, pure expression, that suited well her name, Shushan, the Lily. During her four years of absence the familiar surroundingsof home had become strange to her, so she spoke with a certain timidity.

"My brother," she said, looking appealingly up to the tall youth whom she had left a mere child—"my brother, will you do something for me when you go to Aintab?"

Kevork protested his willingness, although somewhat surprised.

"My dearest friend," said Shushan, "the person I love best in the world, next after my father and mother and my brothers, is just now going to Aintab, to the school for girls. They hurried me away so quickly that I could not see her to say good-bye. And I shall not see her now; for, although she must pass by this on her way, she will not come into the town, but lodge in the khan outside. Will you salute her for me, and give her this as a gift from her poor little friend, Shushan Meneshian?" She drew from her bosom something resembling a necklace, made of amber beads, and held it out to Kevork.

He stooped down to take it, saying, "Well, then, my sister, what is the name of the girl?"

"Elmas Stepanian; she is the daughter of the Badvellie."

"Badvellie" means "full of honour"; and the Armenians usually speak of their priests and pastors by this respectful title.

"Stay, Kevork," said his mother. "You had better not take thattebish. Shushan is a child, and does not know the world. But do you think that it is possible the foreigners would allow the boys and the girls to speak to one another? They are very good people, else surely our cousins would not have let their own children, and Shushan, go to school to them."

This certainly was a difficulty, and even Shushan looked perplexed. But Kevork was equal to the occasion. "Yon Effendi tells me that the foreign Effendis, men and women, talk to each other just as much and as often as they like," he said. "Shushan, my sister, I will pray of the Effendi who teaches me to give thy token to the Effendi who teaches Oriort[2]Elmas Stepanian, and she will find some right way, I have no doubt, of giving it to her."

"Do so, Kevork, and I thank thee many times." She gave him the string of beads, and then her tongue waxed eloquent in praise of her friend. "She is so good, so clever," she said. "She knows, oh, so many things! She can speak and write English, not just a little as I do, but beautifully, like a real American! She knows grammar and geography, and the counting up of figures, and the story of the world. She does not want athought-string like that to help her." (Both Turks and Armenians are accustomed, when thinking or talking, to finger strings of beads, calledtebishes, and to obtain some mysterious assistance from the process.) "Oh! no. She would never use one at school, nor indeed would most of us. But now she is going where she will have suchveryhard lessons to learn, that perhaps she may be glad of it. At least it will remind her of her poor little Shushan. Tell her, Kevork, that Shushan puts a prayer for her on every bead she sends her."

"I think it is a very foolish plan to teach all those things to girls," one of the old women observed. "They will be fit for nothing else in the world but reading books, and who will mind the babies? And what will become of cooking and washing and baking bread, not to talk of spinning and sewing?"

"The girls of the American school at Urfa cook and bake and spin and sew right well for their years," Shushan spoke up bravely. "And those who go to Aintab, like Elmas, learn those things even better there. Oh, I wish you could see Elmas in her home, working to help her mother, and taking care of her little brothers and sister; you would know what she was worth then."

This did not fall upon unheeding ears. YoungKevork made a mental note of it; then turned quickly to ask his mother what she could manage to give him in the way of clothing, as his cousin wished to set out on his journey the morning of the day after next.

Meanwhile Jack was busily employed writing to his uncle, and to his uncle's son. The former he told, briefly enough, of his father's death, his own long illness, and the care and kindness of the people amongst whom he had fallen. He asked him to write to him, and to send him money for his journey home, and also to recompense those who had been so good to him. He knew, of course, that he would have a considerable income of his own, so he felt no difficulty in making this request. He concluded with love to his relatives and enquiries after their welfare. To his cousin he wrote more freely, and gave more particulars. But even to him his words did not flow easily. He could not take up his life in his hand, and look at it from the outside, so as to describe it to another. He could only give details of his surroundings, and of this he soon tired, being unaccustomed to write in English, or indeed to write at all. He broke off abruptly, folded up the two letters in one, sealed the packet, directed it to his uncle, and brought it to Thomassian.

Baron Muggurditch Thomassian wasemphatically the courteous, cultured, cosmopolitan Armenian. He had amassed a considerable fortune in his business, which was that of a merchant of drugs; and to which he joined some cautious and lucrative money-lending. Moreover, he had travelled far, and seen much. He could speak several languages quite well enough to make shrewd bargains in them; and he knew the art of spending as well as of making money. He could appreciate music, poetry, and painting, no less than luxuries of a more material kind. Yet Jack felt as if he could never love him, never trust him even, as he did his friends in Biridjik. "I don't know what it is," he said to himself; "for there is nothing amiss with his looks, except perhaps something a little shifty about his eyes."

Nothing, however, could have been more courteous than his response to Jack's request that he would take charge of his letter, and see it safe into some really reliable post-office.

"I am asking my friends to send money to bring me home," he added, by way of explanation.

"How did you tell them to send it, Mr. Grayson?" asked Thomassian.

"I never thought of telling them how. I thought they would know themselves," Jack answered simply.

"It is not so simple a matter as you think," said Thomassian.

"Then what must I do? Stay, could it be managed this way? You are going to Aleppo?"

"Yes, Effendi."

"The English Consul there was my father's friend, and very kind to us. He would let my uncle send the money to him, and would know how to send it to me. I daresay he would write to my uncle too. You will ask him, will you not, Baron Thomassian?"

"I will do it without fail."

"And I am very grateful to you," Jack said, giving him his hand in English fashion, though the courteous Eastern did not fail to bow low over it.

Next morning Muggurditch Thomassian went his way, taking with him Jack's letter and Jack's chief friend Kevork, but leaving behind him what was destined to be of still more importance in the life of the English youth.

FOOTNOTES:[1]The "perch" upon which the Turkish guard reposed was a kind of booth, erected on the top of four poles, twelve or fifteen feet high, planted firmly in the ground.[2]Miss.

[1]The "perch" upon which the Turkish guard reposed was a kind of booth, erected on the top of four poles, twelve or fifteen feet high, planted firmly in the ground.

[2]Miss.

"He moved about the house with joyAnd with the certain step of man."—Tennyson.

"He moved about the house with joy

And with the certain step of man."

—Tennyson.

"Good-morning, Mr. John, I give you my salvation."

Very softly and sweetly fell the English words from the pretty lips of Shushan. Jack stood before her (it was spring now) with a great basket of spring flowers—glorious red anemones, fragrant wild roses, pink and yellow—wild heliotrope, wild hyacinths, and other flowers for which we have no name in England. They were not alone together, of course; Mariam Hanum was there at her wheel, and two or three other women or girls of the family, spinning or sewing. Shushan herself was bending over a piece of the beautiful silk embroidery she had learned in Urfa, when the entrance of the young Englishman with the flowers they all loved so well made all look up together. Only the men and boys of their own family mightcome in thus freely to the room where the women sat; for any others the younger ones would have withdrawn, or at least have veiled their faces modestly. Shushan, at her first home-coming, used to do so for Jack; but the practice had gradually and insensibly fallen into disuse. She had been learning English in the school in Urfa, and at this time it was the greatest pleasure Jack had in life to hear her speak it. She was not unwilling to do so, being most anxious to remember all she had been taught.

"Is that right said, Mr. Yon?" she asked.

"It is very nice. And now, for mysalutation, I give you my flowers. Here are enough for everybody."

He laid the basket down beside Mariam, having first taken out a fragrant nosegay of roses and heliotrope, carefully chosen and tied with grass.

"It is for saying a good lesson," he explained, as he offered it to Shushan.

Jack was now a tall, handsome youth of eighteen. Of late he had grown strong and active, and he took part as much as he could in outdoor life, especially in riding. In the saddle he was utterly fearless, and he began to be very helpful to Hohannes in the training of his young horses.

A month after the departure of Thomassian, hebegan to look out for answers to his letters. But in vain he watched and waited; nothing came for him. Weeks passed away, and then months; still the silence was unbroken. Jack was astonished, disappointed; sometimes, by fits and starts, he was angry. It looked as if his English friends did not care for him any longer, as if they chose to forget him. If it were not so, why had they, all this time, made no effort to find out what had become of his father and himself? Very well; if so it were, he could do without them. He could not just then feel any pressing anxiety to leave Biridjik; although of course he always meant to go back to England some time or other. When he came of age, he would certainly go, for then he could claim his inheritance.

But it was pleasant here. How richly glowed the Eastern sky! how glorious the wealth of roses! how sweetly smelled the blossoming vines, as he rode past the vineyards on the hills!

At last the vintage time came round again.

One fine autumn morning a string of horses, mules, and donkeys stood at the door of the Meneshians' house. Upon them were packed two tents of coarse black cloth—that cloth of Cilicia which the tent-maker of Tarsus used to weave. Some thin mattrasses and rugs were thrown over the bright-coloured saddles, and in thesaddlebags were provisions, cooking utensils, and a few changes of dress. Then the whole family, from old Hohannes down to the youngest child, seated themselves, or were seated, on the animals as best they could find a place; and the yearly visit to the vineyards—the great autumn holiday of the Armenians—began.

If ever they shook off the deep melancholy which ages of oppression had stamped upon their race, it was in the simple pleasures of those sweet vintage days. The days were all too short for them, so they began them very early, with the singing of a psalm or hymn together. Then they dispersed to the different kinds of work allotted to them. Some stripped the low trees of their wealth of clusters, others trod out the juice in wooden troughs; again, others made it into sherbet, or into a kind of sugar, or mixed it with starch and with the kernels of nuts for the preparation of bastuc. Again, a company of happy children plucked the large grapes singly from their stalks and laid them in the sun, on great white linen cloths, to turn themselves into raisins. Their labours were lightened with talk and song, and sometimes even with jests and laughter.

One morning John Grayson, gathering grapes apart from the rest, heard a piteous cry for help. The voice was Shushan's; she was in pain ordanger. Dropping his basket on the ground, he tore along, leaping over the low vines, making a straight line for the spot whence came the cry, whence came also horrible sounds—the yelps, the snarls, the growls of savage dogs.

In a corner of the vineyard Shushan and little Hagop clung together, just keeping at bay, with loose stones from the low wall, five or six wild, half-famished, wolfish dogs. Their strength was nearly gone. Another minute and they would be torn to pieces.

Jack dashed in amongst the dogs, dealing frantic kicks and blows about him. No matter what came next, if only he saved Shushan.

"Run! make for the tent!" he cried to her and Hagop.

The brutes being for the moment occupied with him, the thing was possible, and they did it.

The sunshine flashed on something bright in the belt of his zeboun—the great scissors used for cutting grapes. He seized it, and drove it with all his might into the neck of the nearest dog. Yelping with pain, the creature ran off. But the stoop was nearly fatal; two or three sprang on him at once;—he felt fierce teeth meeting in his flesh.

"Done for!" he groaned, conscious only of agony and blackness.

But the next moment a tumult of cries andshouts rang in his ears; the dogs were flying in all directions before the sticks and stones of his friends, who had hurried in a body to his help. They had heard the yelping even before Shushan and Hagop, trembling and exhausted, were able to reach them. The creatures belonged to some Kourdish shepherds, who chanced to be passing that way, and the low wall of the vineyard was no protection against their attacks.

Jack was brought back to his tent amidst the praises and condolences of the whole company. Mariam Hanum bound up his wounds, weeping and blessing him, and saying many a hearty "Park Derocha" ("Praise to the Lord") for the deliverance of her children.

Shushan did not say much; but, after they went home from the vineyard, she was observed to be very busy over some choice embroidery. She did not take the time for it from her ordinary work, or from any of her domestic tasks, but she worked diligently all her spare time, and sometimes far into the night.

At last, one day, she laid a parcel of considerable size at the feet of the astonished English youth, saying timidly, "Yon Effendi, you saved my life. I want to thank you."

The parcel contained what an Armenian lady considers the most graceful and most appropriategift she can offer to a gentleman, especially if it be all her own work—a set of beautifully embroidered bath towels!

But a day was to come when John Grayson would have given all he possessed, nay, his very life, that he hadnotheard Shushan Meneshian's agonized cry for help in the vineyard, or had heard it too late.

"If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for He that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they."—Eccles.v. 8.

After this adventure Jack matured much more quickly. His manhood grew in him apace, and with it came courage and energy, and the spirit of enterprise. He thought often of England now, wondering at the silence and inaction of all his relatives. That,beforehe wrote to them, they made no sign, he would not have wondered at, if he had known all the truth. The Syrian servants of his father, who had abandoned him in his illness and stolen his baggage, brought back word to Aleppo that both father and son were dead of the fever. For obvious reasons they did not remain in the city; but the story came to the ears of the Consul, and he had no reason to doubt its truth. He opened some letters which had been sent to him for Grayson, and having thusdiscovered his brother's address, wrote to tell him what had happened.

Ignorant of all this, Jack was sometimes tempted to unkind thoughts of his relatives in England. He even occasionally allowed himself to think, with a touch of bitterness, that they were finding the Grayson money very convenient, and that it might go hard with them to give it up if he should reappear. But the thought, like snow in a warm climate, did notrest. Jack's was essentially a generous nature. It was an added wonder, however, even greater than the first, that they never answered the letter sent them through Thomassian.

But wondering and watching was idle work; and Jack, now a man grown, began to ask himself why, if he really wanted to go to England, he didnotgo? It would be difficult, and it might be dangerous, but all the better for that! What hindered his borrowing a horse, asking Hohannes to give him whatever remained—if anything did remain—of his father's money, hiring a Turkish servant, and making a dash for Aleppo? Once there, the Consul would help him; and soon after his return to England he would be of age, and able to act for himself.

What hindered him? Certainly not the perils of the way, though these were very real. He had passed beyond that stage now, finally andfor ever. The thought of peril, far from daunting him, now made his blood tingle in his veins. Then what hindered him? He was an Englishman, and he had his life to live, his inheritance to claim, his birthright to recover. But still more he was something else, and that something—not yet expressed, not yet acknowledged even in the depths of his own heart—held him fast in the little town by far Euphrates.

At Shushan's first home-coming he had been very shy of her. But in brotherly intercourse that had worn off, and a pleasant "camaraderie" had grown up between them. He read English with her, using the two books he had, his father's Bible and "Westward Ho"; and she had an Armenian Bible which they used to compare with the English. Well she loved its sweet words of promise, and often she would point them out to Jack and to Gabriel, who generally shared the lessons. But their talks were not all grave; they had many a quiet laugh together over her broken English, and sometimes Jack would tell her stories of his own country, and of things that happened there.

She in return would talk of Urfa: of the dear American school, of her beloved Elmas Stepanian, and her other friends. She would describe the American ladies of the Mission:tall, grave Miss Celandine, revered as a mother, and her bright young colleague Miss Fairchild; Jack's fair-haired lady of the ferry-boat, whom, however, he entirely failed to recognise from her description.

But since the battle with the dogs and the gift of the towels, his shyness had returned in full force. So much so that when, with great trouble, he caught in hunting, and brought back to her, one of the pretty little gazelles the Armenians love to keep as pets, it cost him more trouble still to present his offering. But he was rewarded by the light in Shushan's lovely face, and the smile with which she spoke her gentle "Much very thanks, Master John."

Yet the passion that began to grow in John Grayson's heart was two-fold. Love and burning indignation were so closely twined together, that he could not have severed them if he tried. As his whole development since his illness had been slow, so it was but slowly and gradually that he grew to understand the conditions under which Shushan and all the rest were living. But when he came to realize them fully, he wished at first to escape and fight his way to the coast, so as anyhow and on any terms to get out of that horrible country. But he wished afterwards to stay, and stand side by side and shoulder toshoulder with these, the desolate and oppressed, whom he so loved.

Never, perhaps, has oppression been at once so comprehensive and so minute. The iron entered into their souls; and at the same time their fingers were vexed with innumerable pin pricks. Jack had seen a hundred times, without much notice, the rude wooden ploughs in use in the district—mere hurdles with pieces of iron stuck in the end; but one day it occurred to him, on some provocation, to abuse them roundly, and to ask if there was not a smith in the country who could make a decent ploughshare.

"Our smiths could make anything yours could," said Avedis, with whom he was walking.

"Then why don't they?"

"I thought you knew." He lowered his voice and whispered, "Daajek"—the Turk.

"You mean they won't allow you?"

Avedis nodded. "Wait till we get home," he said.

The conversation was resumed, where alone such conversations were safe, though not always even there, within closed doors.

"I know," said Jack, "that the Turks hate machinery."

"They detest it, and they fear it. They think every machine the work of Shaytan—the Devil."

"I can't help thinking," said Jack, "of the Dark Ages, and of what I read of them before I came. Here are men of the twelfth century, with their feet on the necks of men of the nineteenth. It's bad for both.Theymust be puzzled with you, and afraid of you, as a Norman Baron would have been of his Saxon serfs if they had understood all about steam and electricity, while he thought those things mysterious works of the Devil. But I wonder how long he could have kept them serfs?"

"As long as he had arms, and they had none. More especially if he was backed up from outside," Avedis answered sadly. Then he sang softly, as if to himself, two lines of an old Armenian national song—

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