He perceived, Guy Matthews, that his lark had indeed taken an unexpected turn. He was destined, far sooner than he dreamed, to be asked of life, and to answer, questions even more direct than this. But until now life had chosen to confront him with no problem more pressing than one of cricket or hunting. He was therefore troubled by an unwonted confusion of feelings. For he felt that his ordinary vocabulary—made up of such substantives as lark, cheek, and bounder, and the comprehensive adjective rum—fell short of coping with this extraordinary speech. He even felt that he might possibly have answered in a different way, but for that unspeakable offer of money. And the rumble of Magin’s bass in the dark stone room somehow threw a light on the melancholy land without, somehow gave him a dim sense that he did not answer for himselfalone—that he answered for the tradition of Layard and Rawlinson and Morier and Sherley, of Clive and Kitchener, of Drake and Raleigh and Nelson, of all the adventurous young men of that beloved foggy island at which this pseudo-Brazilian jeered.
“When I first met you in the river, Mr. Magin,” he said quietly, “I confess I did not realise how much of the spoils of Susa you were carrying away in your chests. And I didn’t take your gold anklet as a bribe, though I didn’t take you for too much of a gentleman in offering it to me. But all I have to say now is that I shall stay in Dizful as long as I please—and that you had better clear out of this house unless you want me to kick you out.”
“Heroics, eh? You obstinate little fool! I could choke you with one hand!”
“You’d better try!” retorted Matthews.
He started in spite of himself when a muffled boom suddenly answered him, jarring even the sunken walls of the room. Then he remembered that voice of the drowsing city, bursting out with the pent-up brew of the day.
“Ah!” exclaimed Magin strangely—“The cannon speaks at last! You will hear, beside your fountain, what it has to say. That, at any rate, you will perhaps understand—you and the people of your island.” He stopped a moment. “But,” he went on, “if some fasting dervish knocks you on the head with his mace, or sticks his knife into your back, don’t say I didn’t warn you!”
And the echo of his receding stamp in the corridor drowned for a moment the trickle of the invisible water.
The destiny of some men lies coiled within them, invisible as the blood of their hearts or the stuff of their will, working darkly, day by day and year after year, for their glory or for their destruction. The destiny of other men is an accident, a god from the machine or an enemy in ambush. Such was the destiny of Guy Matthews, as it was of how many other unsuspecting young men of his time. It would have been inconceivable to him, as he stood in his dark stone room listening to Magin’s receding stamp, that anything could make him do what Magin demanded. Yet something did—the last drop of the acrid essence Dizful had been brewing for him.
The letter that accomplished this miracle came to him by the hand of a Bakhtiari from Meidan-i-Naft. It said very little. It said so little, and that little so briefly, that Matthews, still preoccupied with his own quarrel, at first saw no reason why a stupid war on the Continent, and the consequent impossibility of telegraphing home except by way of India, should affect the oil-works, or why his friends should put him in the position of showing Magin the white feather. But as he turned over the Bakhtiari’s scrap of paper the meaning of it grew, in the light of the very circumstances that made him hesitate, so portentouslythat he sent Abbas for horses. And before the Ramazan gun boomed again he was well on his way back to Meidan-i-Naft.
There was something unreal to him about that night ride eastward across the dusty moonlit plain. He never forgot that night. The unexpectedness of it was only a part of the unreality. What pulled him up short was a new quality in the general unexpectedness of life. Life had always been, like the trip from which he was returning, more or less of a lark. Whereas it suddenly appeared that life might, perhaps, be very little of a lark. So far as he had ever pictured life to himself he had seen it as an extension of his ordered English countryside, beset by no hazard more searching than a hawthorne hedge. But the plain across which he rode gave him a new picture of it, lighted romantically enough by the moon, yet offering a rider magnificent chances to break his neck in some invisible nullah, if not to be waylaid by marauding Lurs or lions. It even began to come to this not too articulate young man that romance and reality might be the same thing, romance being what happens to the other fellow and reality being what happens to you. He looked up at the moon of war that had been heralded to him by cannon and tried to imagine what, under that same moon far away in Europe, was happening to the other fellow. For it was entirely on the cards that it might also happen to him, Guy Matthews, who had gone up the Ab-i-Diz for a lark! That experiencehad an extraordinary air of having happened to someone else, as he went back in his mind to his cruise on the river, his meeting with the barge, his first glimpse of Dizful, the interlude of Bala Bala, the return to Dizful, the cannon, Magin. Magin! He was extraordinary enough, in all conscience, as Matthews tried to piece together, under his romantic-realistic moon, the various unrelated fragments his memory produced of that individual, connoisseur of Greek kylixes and Lur nose-jewels, quoter of Scripture and secret agent.
The bounder must have known, as he sat smoking his cigar and ironising on the ruins of empires, that the safe and settled little world to which they both belonged was already in a blaze. Of course he had known it—and he had said nothing about it! But not least extraordinary was the way the bounder, whom after all Matthews had only seen twice, seemed to colour the whole adventure. In fact, he had been the first speck in the blue, the forerunner—if Matthews had only seen it—of the more epic adventure into which he was so quickly to be caught.
At Shustar he broke his journey. There were still thirty miles to do, and fresh horses were to be hired—of some fastingcharvadarwho would never consent in Ramazan, Matthews very well knew, to start for Meidan-i-Naft under the terrific August sun. But he was not ungrateful for a chance to rest. He discovered in himself, too, a sudden interest in the trickle of the telegraph. And he was anxious to pickup what news he could from the few Europeans in the town. Moreover, he needed to see Ganz about the replenishing of his money-bag; for not the lightest item of the traveller’s pack in Persia is his load of silverkrans.
At the telegraph office Matthews ran into Ganz himself. The Swiss was a short fair faded man, not too neat about his white clothes, with a pensive moustache and an ambiguous blue eye that lighted at sight of the young Englishman. The light, however, was not one to illuminate Matthews’s darkness in the matter of news. What news trickled out of the local wire was very meagre indeed. The Austrians were shelling Belgrade, the Germans, the Russians, and the French had gone in. That was all. No, not quite all; for the bank-rate in England had suddenly jumped sky-high—higher, at any rate, than it had ever jumped before. And even Shustar felt the distant commotion, in that the bazaar had already seen fit to put up the price of sugar and petroleum. Not that Shustar showed any outward sign of commotion as the two threaded their way toward Ganz’s house. The deserted streets reminded Matthews strangely of Dizful. What was stranger was to find how they reminded him of a chapter that is closed. He hardly noticed the blank walls, the archways of brick and tile, the tallbadgirs, even the filth and smells. But strangest was it to listen to the hot silence, to look up at the brilliant stripe of blue between the adobe walls, while over there—!
The portentous uncertainty of what might be over there made his answers to Ganz’s questions about his journey curt and abstracted. He gave no explanation of his failure to see the celebration at Bala Bala and the ruins of Susa, which Ganz supposed to be the chief objects of his excursion. Yet he found himself looking with a new eye at the anomalous exile whom the Father of Swords called the prince among the merchants of Shustar, noting the faded untidy air as he had never noted it before, wondering why a man should bury himself in such a hole as this. Was one now, he speculated, to look at everybody all over again? He was not the kind of man, Ganz, to interest the Guy Matthews who had gone to Dizful. But it was the Guy Matthews who came back from Dizful who didn’t like Ganz’s name or Ganz’s good enough accent. Nevertheless he yielded to Ganz’s insistence, when they reached the office and the money-bag had been restored to its normal portliness, that the traveller should step into the house to rest and cool off.
“Do come!” urged the Swiss. “I so seldom see a civilised being. And I have a new piano!” he threw in as an added inducement. “Do you play?”
He had no parlour tricks, he told Ganz, and he told himself that he wanted to get on. But Ganz had been very decent to him, after all. And he began to perceive that he himself was extremely tired. So he followed Ganz through the cloister of the pool to thecourt where the great basin glittered in the sun, below the pillared portico.
“Who is that?” exclaimed Ganz suddenly. “What a tone, eh? And what a touch!”
Matthews heard from Ganz’s private quarters a welling of music so different from the pipes and cow-horns of Dizful that it gave him a sudden stab of homesickness.
“I say,” he said, brightening, “could it be any of the fellows from Meidan-i-Naft?”
The ambiguous blue eye brightened too.
“Perhaps! It is the river music fromRheingold. But listen,” Ganz added with a smile. “There are sharks among the Rhine maidens!”
They went on, up the steps of the portico, to the door which Ganz opened softly, stepping aside for his visitor to pass in. The room was so dark, after the blinding light of the court, that Matthews saw nothing at first. He stepped forward eagerly, feeling his way among Ganz’s tables and chairs toward the end of the room from which the music came. They gave him, the cluttering tables and chairs, after the empty rooms he had been living in, a sharper renewal of his stab. And even a piano—! It made him think of Kipling and theSong of the Banjo:
“I am memory and torment—I am Town!I am all that ever went with evening dress!”
“I am memory and torment—I am Town!I am all that ever went with evening dress!”
“I am memory and torment—I am Town!I am all that ever went with evening dress!”
“I am memory and torment—I am Town!
I am all that ever went with evening dress!”
But what mute inglorious Paderewski of the restricted circle he had moved in for the past monthswas capable of such parlour tricks as this? Then, suddenly, he saw. He saw, swaying back and forth against the dark background of the piano, a domed shaven head that made him stop short—that head full of so many astounding things! He saw, travelling swiftly up and down the keys, rising above them to an extravagant height and pouncing down upon them again, those predatory hands that had pounced on the spoils of Susa! They began, in a moment, to flutter lightly over the upper end of the keyboard. It was extraordinary what a ripple poured as if out of those hands. Magin himself bent over to listen to the ripple, partly showing his face as he turned his ear to the keys. He showed, too, in the lessening gloom, a smile Matthews had never seen before, more extraordinary than anything. Yet even as Matthews watched it, in his stupefaction, the smile changed, broadened, hardened. And Magin, sitting up straight again with his back to the room, began to execute a series of crashing chords.
After several minutes he stopped and swung around on the piano-stool. Ganz clapped his hands, shouting “Bis! Bis!” At that Magin rose, bowed elaborately, and kissed his hands right and left. He ended by pulling up a table-cover near him, gazing intently under the table.
“Have you lost something?” inquired Ganz.
“I seem,” answered Magin, “to have lost half my audience. What has become of our elusive English friend? Am I so unfortunate as to have been unableto satisfy his refined ear? Or can it be that his emotions were too much for him?”
“He was in a hurry,” explained Ganz. “He is just back from Dizful, you know.”
“Ah?” uttered Magin. “He is a very curious young man. He is always in a hurry. He was in a hurry the first time I had the pleasure of meeting him. He was in such a hurry at Bala Bala that he didn’t wait to see the celebration which you told me he went to see. He also left Dizful in a surprising hurry, from what I hear. I happen to know that the telegraph had nothing to do with it. I can only conclude that some one frightened him away. Where do you suppose he hurries to? And do you think he will arrive in time?”
Ganz opened his mouth; but if he intended to say something, he decided instead to draw his hand across his spare jaw. However, he did speak after all.
“I notice that you at least do not hurry, Majesty! Do you fiddle while Rome burns?”
“Ha!” laughed Magin. “It is not Rome that burns! And I notice, Mr. Ganz, that you seem to be of a forgetful as well as of an inquiring disposition. I would have been in Mohamera long ago if it had not been for your Son of Papa, with his interest in unspoiled towns. I will thank you to issue no more letters to the Father of Swords without remembering me. Do you wish to enrich the already overstocked British Museum at my expense? But I do not mindrevealing to you that I am now really on my way to Mohamera.”
“H’m,” let out Ganz slowly. “My dear fellow, haven’t you heard that there is a war in Europe?”
“I must confess, my good Ganz, that I have. But what has Europe to do with Mohamera?”
“God knows,” said Ganz. “I should think however, since you are so far from the Gulf, that you would prefer the route of Baghdad—now that French and Russian cruisers are seeking whom they may devour.”
“You forget, Mr. Ganz, that I am so fortunate as to possess a number of valuable objects of virtue. I would think twice before attempting to carry those objects of virtue through the country of our excellent friends the Beni Lam Arabs!”
Ganz laughed.
“Your objects of virtue could very well be left with me. What if the English should go into the war?”
“The English? Go into the war? Never fear! This is not their affair. And if it were, what could they do? Sail their famous ships up the Rhine and the Elbe? Besides, that treacherous memory of yours seems to fail you again. This is Persia, not England.”
“Perhaps,” answered Ganz. “But the English are very funny people. There is a rumour, you know, of pourparlers. What if you were to sail down to the Gulf and some little midshipman were to fire a shot across your bow?”
“Ah, bah! I am a neutral! And Britannia is a fat old woman! Also a rich one, who doesn’t put her hand into her pocket to please her neighbours. Besides, I have a little affair with the Sheikh of Mohamera—objects of virtue, indigo, who knows what? As you know, I am a versatile man.” And swinging around on his stool, Magin began to play again.
“But even fat old women sometimes know how to bite,” objected Ganz.
“Not when their teeth have dropped out,” Magin threw over his shoulder—“or when strong young men plug their jaws!”
Two days later, or not quite three days later, the galley and the motor-boat whose accidental encounter brought about the events of this narrative met again. This second meeting took place in the Karun, as before, but at a point some fifty or sixty miles below Bund-i-Kir. And now the moon, not the sun, cast its paler glitter between the high dark banks of the stream.
It was a keen-eared young Lur who first heard afar the pant of the mysterious jinni. Before he or his companions descried the motor-boat, however, Gaston, rounding a sharp curve above the island of Umm-un-Nakhl, caught sight of the sweeps of the barge flashing in the moonlight. The unexpected view of that flash was not disagreeable to Gaston. For, as Gaston put it to himself, he wassad—despite the efforts of his friend, the telegraph operator at Ahwaz, to cheer him up. It is true that the operator, who was Irish and a man of heart, had accorded him but a limited amount of cheer, together with hard words not a few. Recalling them, Gaston picked up a knife that lay on the seat beside him—an odd curved knife of the country, in a leather sheath. There is no reason why I should conceal the fact that this knife was a gift from Gaston’s Bakhtiari henchman, who had presented it to Gaston, with immense solemnity, on hearing that there was a war inFirengistanand that the young men of the oil works were going to it. What had become of that type of a Bakhtiari, Gaston wondered? Then, spying the flash of those remembered oars, he bethought him of the seigneur of a Brazilian whose hospitable yacht, he had reason to know, was not destitute of cheer.
When he was near enough the barge to make out the shadow of the high beak on the moonlit water he cut off the motor. The sweeps forthwith ceased to flash. Gaston then called out the customary salutation. It was answered, as before, by the deep voice of the Brazilian. He stood at the rail of the barge as the motor-boat glided alongside.
“Ah,mon vieux, you are alone this time?” said Magin genially. “Where are the others?”
“I do not figure to myself,” answered Gaston, “that you derange yourself to inquire for my sacred devil of a Bakhtiari, who has taken the key of the fields. As for Monsieur Guy, the Englishman yousaw the other time, whose name does not pronounce itself, he has gone to the war. I just took him and three others to Ahwaz, where they meet more of their friends and all go together on the steamer to Mohamera.”
“Really! And did you hear any news at Ahwaz?”
“The latest is that England has declared war.”
“Tiens!” exclaimed Magin. His voice was extraordinarily loud and deep in the stillness of the river. It impressed Gaston, who sat looking up at the dark figure in front of the ghostly Lurs. What types, with their black hats of a theatre! He hoped the absence of M’sieu Guy and the Brazilian’s evident surprise would not cloud the latter’s hospitality. He was accordingly gratified to hear the Brazilian say, after a moment: “And they tell us that madness is not catching! But we, at least, have not lost our heads. Eh? To prove it, Monsieur Gaston, will you not come aboard a moment, if you are not in too much of a hurry, and drink a little glass with me?”
Gaston needed no urging. In a trice he had lashed his boat to the barge and was on the deck. The agreeable Brazilian was not too much of a seigneur to shake his hand in welcome, or to lead him into the cabin where a young Lur was in the act of lighting candles.
“It is so hot, and so many strange beasts fly about this river,” Magin explained, “that I usually prefer to travel without a light. But we must see the wayto our mouths! What will you have? Beer? Bordeaux? Champagne?”
Gaston considered this serious question with attention.
“Since Monsieur has the goodness to inquire, if Monsieur has any of thatfine champagneI tasted before——”
“Ah yes! Certainly.” And he gave a rapid order to the Lur. Then he stood silent, his eyes fixed on the reed portière. Gaston was more impressed than ever as he stood too,béretin hand, looking around the little saloon, so oddly, yet so comfortably fitted out with rugs and skins. Presently the Lur reappeared through the reed portière, which aroused the Brazilian from his abstraction. He filled the two glasses himself, waving his attendant out of the cabin, and handed one to Gaston. The other he raised in the air, bowing to his guest. “To the victor!” he said. “And sit down, won’t you? There is more than one glass in that bottle.”
Gaston was enchanted to sit down and to sip another cognac.
“But, Monsieur,” he exclaimed, looking about again, “you travel like an emperor!”
“Ho!” laughed Magin, with a quick glance at Gaston. “I am well enough here. But there is one difficulty.” He looked at his glass, holding it up to the light. “I travel too slowly.”
Gaston smiled.
“In Persia, who cares?”
“Well, it happens that at this moment I do. I have affairs at Mohamera. And in this tub it will take me three days more at the best—without considering that I shall have to wait till daylight to get through the rocks at Ahwaz.” He lowered his glass and looked back at Gaston. “Tell me: Why shouldn’t you take me down, ahead of my tub? Eh? Or to Sablah, if Mohamera is too far? It would not delay you so much, after all. You can tell them any story you like at Sheleilieh. Otherwise I am sure we can make a satisfactory arrangement.” He put his hand suggestively into his pocket.
Gaston considered it between sips. It really was not much to do for this uncle of America who had been so amiable. And others had suddenly become so much less amiable than their wont. Moreover that Bakhtiari—he might repent when he heard the motor again. At any rate one could say that one had waited for him. And the Brazilian would no doubt show a gratitude so handsome that one could afford to be a little independent. If those on the steamer asked any questions when the motor-boat passed, surely the Brazilian, who was more of a seigneur than any employé of an oil company, would know how to answer.
“Allons!Why not?” he said aloud.
“Bravo!” cried the Brazilian, withdrawing his hand from his pocket. “Take that as part of my ticket. And excuse me a moment while I make arrangements.”
He disappeared through the reed portière, leaving Gaston to admire five shining napoleons. It gave him an odd sensation to see, after so long, those coins of his country. When Magin finally came back, it was through the inner door.
“Tell me: how much can you carry?” he asked. “I have four boxes I would like to take with me, besides a few small things. These fools might wreck themselves at Ahwaz and lose everything in the river. It would annoy me very much—after all the trouble I have had to collect my objects of virtue! Besides, the tub will get through more easily without them. Come in and see.”
“Mon Dieu!” exclaimed Gaston, scratching his head, when he saw. “My boat won’t get through more easily with them, especially at night.” He looked curiously around the cozy stateroom.
“But it will take them, eh? If necessary, we can land them at Ahwaz and have them carried around the rapids.”
The thing took some manœuvring; but the Lurs, with the help of much fluent profanity from their master, finally accomplished it without sinking the motor-boat. Gaston, sitting at the wheel to guard his precious engine against some clumsiness of the black-hatted mountaineers, looked on with humorous astonishment at this turn of affairs. He was destined, it appeared, to be disappointed in his hope of cheer. That cognac was really very good—if only one had had more of it. Still, one at least had companynow; and he was not the man to be insensible to the fine champagne of the unexpected. Nor was he unconscious that of many baroque scenes at which he had assisted, this was not the least baroque.
When the fourth chest had gingerly been lowered into place, Magin vanished again. Presently he reappeared, followed by his majordomo, to whom he gave instructions in a low voice. Then he stepped into the stern of the boat. The majordomo, taking two portmanteaux and a rug from the Lurs behind him, handed them down to Gaston. Having disposed of them, Gaston stood up, his eyes on the Lurs who crowded the rail.
“Well, my friend,” said Magin gaily, “for whom are you waiting? We shall yet have opportunities to admire the romantic scenery of the Karun!”
“Ah! Monsieur takes no—other object of virtue with him?”
“Have you so much room?” laughed Magin. “It is a good thing there is no wind to-night. Go ahead.”
Gaston cast off, backed a few feet, reversed, and described a wide arc around the stern of the barge. It made a singular picture in the moonlight, with its black-curved beak and its spectral crew. They shifted to the other rail as the motor-boat came about, watching silently.
“To your oars!” shouted Magin at them. “Row, sons of burnt fathers! Will you have me wait a month for you at Mohamera?”
They scattered to their places, and Gaston caughtthe renewed flash of the sweeps as he turned to steer for the bend. It was a good thing, he told himself, that there was no wind to-night. The gunwale was nearer the water than he or the boat cared for. She made nothing like her usual speed. However, he said nothing. Neither did Magin—until the dark shadow of Umm-un-Nakhl divided the glitter in front of them.
“Take the narrower channel,” he ordered then. And when they were in it he added: “Stop, will you, and steer in there, under the shadow of the shore? I think we would better fortify ourselves for the work of the night. I at least did not forget the cognac, among my other objects of virtue.”
They fortified themselves accordingly, the Brazilian producing cigars as well. He certainly was an original, thought Gaston, now hopeful of experiencing actual cheer. That originality proved itself anew when, after a much longer period of refreshment than would suit most gentlemen in a hurry, the familiar flash became visible in the river behind them.
“Now be quiet,” commanded the extraordinary uncle of America. “What ever happens we mustn’t let them hear us. If they take this channel, we will slip down, and run part way up the other. We shall give them a little surprise.”
Nearer and nearer came the flash, which suddenly went out behind the island. A recurrent splash succeeded it, and a wild melancholy singing. The singing and the recurrent splash grew louder, filled thesilence of the river, grew softer; and presently the receding oars flashed again, below the island. But not until the last glint was lost in the shimmer of the water, the last sound had died out of the summer night, did the Brazilian begin to unfold his surprise.
“Que diable allait-on faire dans cette galère!” he exclaimed. “It’s the first time I ever knew them to do the right thing! Let us drink one more little glass to the good fortune of their voyage. And here, by the way, is another part of my ticket.” He handed Gaston five more napoleons. “But now, my friend, we have some work. I see we shall never get anywhere with all this load. Let us therefore consign our objects of virtue to the safe keeping of the river. He will guard them better than anybody. Is it deep enough here?”
It was deep enough. But what an affair, getting those heavy chests overboard! The last one nearly pulled Magin in with it. One of the clamps caught in his clothes, threw him against the side of the boat, and jerked something after it into the water. He sat down, swearing softly to himself, to catch his breath and investigate the damage.
“It was only my revolver,” he announced. “And we have no need of that, since we are not going to the war! Now, my good Gaston, I have changed my mind. We shall not go down the river, after all. We will go up.”
Gaston, this time, stared at him.
“Up? But, Monsieur, the barge——”
“What is my barge to you, dear Gaston? Besides, it is no longer mine. It now belongs to the Sheikh of Mohamera—with whatever objects of virtue it still contains. He has long teased me for it. And none of them can read the note they are carrying to him! Didn’t I tell you I was going to give them a little surprise? Well, there it is. I am not a man, you see, to be tied to objects of virtue. Which reminds me: where are my portmanteaux?”
“Here, on the tank.”
“Fi! And you a chauffeur! Give them to me. I will arrange myself a little. As for you, turn around and see how quickly you can carry me to the charming resort of Bund-i-Kir—where Antigonus fought Eumenes and the Silver Shields for the spoils of Susa, and won them. Did you ever hear, Gaston, of that interesting incident?”
“Monsieur is too strong for me,” replied Gaston, cryptically. He took off his cap, wiped his face, and sat down at the wheel.
“If a man is not strong, what is he?” rejoined Magin. “But you will not find this cigar too strong,” he added amicably.
Gaston did not. What he found strong was the originality of his passenger—and the way that cognac failed, in spite of its friendly warmth, to cheer him. For he kept thinking of that absurd Bakhtiari, and of the telegraph operator, and of M’sieu Guy, and the others, as he sped northward on the silent moonlit river.
“This is very well, eh, Gaston?” uttered the Brazilian at last. “We march better without our objects of virtue.” Gaston felt that he smiled as he lay smoking on his rug in the bottom of the boat. “But tell me,” he went on presently. “How is it, if I may ask, that you didn’t happen to go in the steamer too, with your Monsieur Guy? You do not look to me either old or incapable.”
There it was, the same question, which really seemed to need no answer at first, but which somehow became harder to answer every time! Why was it? And how could it spoil so good a cognac?
“How is it?” repeated Gaston. “It is, Monsieur, that France is a great lady who does not derange herself for a simple vagabond like Gaston, or about whose liaisons or quarrels it is not for Gaston to concern himself. This great lady has naturally not asked my opinion about this quarrel. But if she had, I would have told her that it is very stupid for everybody in Europe to begin shooting at everybody else. Why? Simply because it pleasesces messieursthe Austrians to treatces messieursthe Serbsde haut en bas! What have I to do with that? Besides, this great lady is very far away, and by the time I arrive she will have arranged her affair. In the meantime there are many others, younger and more capable than I, whose express business it is to arrange such affairs. Will onepiou-pioumore or less change the result of the battle? Of course not! And if I should lose my hand or my head, who would buy me another?Not France! I have seen a little what France does in such cases. My own father left his leg at Gravelotte, together with his job and my mother’s peace. I have seen what happened to her, and how it is that I am a vagabond—about whom France has never troubled herself.” He shouted it over his shoulder, above the noise of the motor, with an increasing loudness. “Also,” he went on, “I have duties not so far away as France. Up there, at Sheleilieh, there will perhaps be next month a little Gaston. If I go away, who will feed him? I have not the courage of Monsieur, who separates himself so easily from objects of virtue.Voilà!”
Magin said nothing for a moment. Then:
“Courage, yes! One needs a little courage in this curious world.” There was a pause, as the boat cut around a dark curve. “But do not think, my poor Gaston, that it is I who blame you. On the contrary, I find you very reasonable—more reasonable than many ministers of state. If others in Europe had been able to express themselves like you, Gaston, Monsieur Guy and his friends would not have run away so suddenly. It takes courage, too, not to run after them.” He made a sound, as if changing his position, and presently he began to sing softly to himself.
“Monsieur would make a fortune in thecafé-chantant,” commented Gaston. He began to feel, at last, after the favourable reception of his speech, a little cheered. He felt cooler, too, in this quiet rushingmoonlight of the river. “What is it that Monsieur sings? It seems to me that I have heard that air.”
“Very likely you have, Gaston. It is a little song of sentiment, sung by all the sentimental young ladies of the world. He who wrote it, however, was far from sentimental. He was a fellow countryman of mine—and of the late Abraham!—who loved your country so much that he lived in it and died in it.” And Magin sang again, more loudly, the first words of the song:
“Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten,Dass ich so traurig bin;Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten,Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.”
“Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten,Dass ich so traurig bin;Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten,Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.”
“Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten,Dass ich so traurig bin;Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten,Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.”
“Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten,
Dass ich so traurig bin;
Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten,
Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.”
Gaston listened with admiration, astonishment, and perplexity. It suddenly came back to him how this original Brazilian had sworn when the chest caught his clothes.
“But, Monsieur, I thought—Are you, then, a German?”
Magin, after a second, laughed.
“But, Gaston, am I then an enemy?”
Gaston examined him in the moonlight.
“Well,” he answered slowly, “if your country and mine are at war——”
“What has that to do with us, as you just now so truly said? You have found that your country’s quarrel was not cause enough for you to leave Persia, and so have I.Voilà tout!” He examined Gastonin turn. “But I thought you knew all the time. Such is fame! I flattered myself that your Monsieur Guy would leave no one untold. Whereas he has left us the pleasure of a situation more piquant, after all, than I supposed. We enjoy the magnificent moonlight of the South, we admire a historic river under its most successful aspect, and we do not exalt ourselves because our countrymen, many hundreds of miles away, have lost their heads.” He smiled over the piquancy of the situation. “Strength is good,” he went on in his impressive bass, “and courage is better. But reason, as you so justly say, is best of all. For which reason,” he added, “allow me to recommend to you, my dear Gaston, that you look a little where you are steering.”
Gaston looked. But he discovered that his moment of cheer had been all too brief. A piquant situation, indeed! The piquancy of that situation somehow complicated everything more darkly than before. If there were reasons why he should not go away with the others, as they had all taken it for granted that he would do, was that a reason why he, Gaston, whose father had lost a leg at Gravelotte, should do this masquerading German a service? All the German’s amiability and originality did not change that. Perhaps, indeed, that explained the originality and amiability.
The German, at any rate, did not seem to trouble himself about it. When Gaston next looked over his shoulder, Magin was lying flat on his back in thebottom of the boat, with his hands under his head and his eyes closed. And so he continued to lie, silent and apparently asleep, while his troubled companion,bereton ear and hand on wheel, steered through the waning moonlight of the Karun.
The moon was but a ghost of itself, and a faint rose was beginning to tinge the pallor of the sky behind the Bakhtiari mountains, when the motor began to miss fire. Gaston, stifling an exclamation, cut it off, unscrewed the cap of the tank, and measured the gasoline. Then he stepped softly forward to the place in the bow where he kept his reserve tins. Magin, roused by the stopping of the boat, sat up, stretching.
“Tiens!” he exclaimed. “Here we are!” He looked about at the high clay banks enclosing the tawny basin of the four rivers. In front of him the konar trees of Bund-i-Kir showed their dark green. At the right, on top of the bluff of the eastern shore, a solitary peasant stood white against the sky. Near him a couple of oxen on an inclined plane worked the rude mechanism that drew up water to the fields. The creak of the pulleys and the splash of the dripping goatskins only made more intense the early morning silence. “Do you remember, Gaston?” asked Magin. “It was here we first had the good fortune to meet—not quite three weeks ago.”
“I remember,” answered Gaston, keeping his eyeon the mouth of the tank he was filling, “that I was the one who wished you peace, Monsieur. And that no one asked who you were, or where you were going.”
Magin yawned.
“Well, you seem to have satisfied yourself now on those important points. I might add, however, for your further information, that I think I shall not go to Bund-i-Kir, which looks too peaceful to disturb at this matinal hour, but there—to the western shore of the Ab-i-Shuteit. And that reminds me. I still have to pay you the rest of my ticket.”
He reached forward and laid a little pile of gold on Gaston’s seat. Gaston, watching out of the corner of his eye as he poured gasoline, saw that there were more than five napoleons in that pile. There were at least ten.
“What would you say, Monsieur,” he asked slowly, emptying his tin, “if I were to take you instead to Sheleilieh—where there are still a few of the English?”
“I would say, my good Gaston, that you had more courage than I thought. By the way,” he went on casually, “what is this?”
He reached forward again toward Gaston’s seat, where lay the Bakhtiari’s present. Gaston dropped his tin and made a snatch at it. But Magin was too quick for him. He retreated to his place at the stern of the boat, where he drew the knife out of its sheath.
“Sharp, too!” he commented, with a smile at Gaston. “And my revolver is gone!”
Gaston, very pale, stepped to his seat.
“That, Monsieur, was given me by my Bakhtiari brother-in-law—to take to the war. When he found I had not the courage to go, he ran away from me.”
“But you thought there might be more than one way to make war, eh? Well, I at least am not an Apache. Perhaps the sharks will know what to do with it.” The blade glittered in the brightening air and splashed out of sight. And Magin, folding his arms, smiled again at Gaston. “Another object of virtue for the safe custody of the Karun!”
“But not all!” cried Gaston thickly, seizing the little pile of gold beside him and flinging it after the knife.
Magin’s smile broadened.
“Have you not forgotten something, Gaston?”
“But certainly not, Monsieur,” he replied, putting his hand into his pocket. The next moment a second shower of gold caught the light. And where the little circles of ripples widened in the river, a sharp fin suddenly cut the muddy water.
“Oho! Mr. Shark loses no time!” cried Magin. He stopped smiling, and turned back to Gaston. “But we do. Allow me to say, my friend, that you prove yourself really too romantic. This is no doubt an excellent comedy which we are playing for the benefit of that gentleman on the bluff. But even hebegins to get tired of it. See? He starts to say his morning prayer. So be so good as to show a little of the reason which you know how to show, and start for shore. But first you might do well to screw on the cap of your tank—if you do not mind a little friendly advice.”
Gaston looked around absent-mindedly, and took up the nickel cap. But he suddenly turned back to Magin.
“You speak too much about friends, Monsieur. I am not your friend. I am your enemy. And I shall not take you there, to the Ab-i-Shuteit. I shall take you into the Ab-i-Gerger—to Sheleilieh and the English.”
Magin considered him, with a flicker in his lighted eyes.
“You might perhaps have done it if you had not forgotten about your gasoline. And you may yet. We shall see. But it seems to me, my—enemy!—that you make a miscalculation. Let us suppose that you take me to Sheleilieh. It is highly improbable, because you no longer have your knife to assist you. I, it is true, no longer have my revolver to assist me; but I have two arms, longer and I fancy stronger than yours. However, let us make the supposition. And let us make the equally improbable supposition that I fall into the hands of the English. What can they do to me? The worst they can do is to give me free lodging and nourishment till the end of the war! Whereas you, Gaston—you do not seem to havereflected that life will not be so simple for you, after this. There is a very unpleasant little word by which they name citizens who do not respond to their country’s call to arms. In other words, Mr. Deserter, you have taken the road which, in war time, ends between a firing-squad and a stone wall.”
Gaston, evidently, had not reflected on that. He stared at his nickel cap, turning it around in his fingers.
“You see?” continued Magin. “Well then, what about that little Gaston? I do not know what has suddenly made you so much less reasonable than you were last night; but I, at least, have not changed. And I see no reason why that little Gaston should be left between two horns of a dilemma. In fact I see excellent reasons not only why you should take me that short distance to the shore, but why you should accompany me to Dizful. There I am at home. I am, more than any one else, emperor. And I need a man like you. I am going to have a car, I am going to have a boat, I am going to have a place in the sun. There will be many changes in that country after the war. You will see. It is not so far, either, from here. It is evident that your heart, like mine, is in this part of the world. So come with me. Eh, Gaston?”
“Heart!” repeated Gaston, with a bitter smile. “It is you who speak of the heart, and of—But you do not speak of the little surprise with which you might some day regale me, Mr. Enemy! Nor doyou say what you fear—that I might take it into my head to go fishing at Umm-un-Nakhl!”
“Ah bah!” exclaimed Magin impatiently. “However, you are right. I am not like you. I do not betray my country for a little savage with a jewel in her nose! It is because of that small difference between us, Gaston, between your people and my people, that you will see such changes here after the war. But you will not see them unless you accept my offer. After all, what else can you do?” He left Gaston to take it in as he twirled his metal cap. “There is the sun already,” Magin added presently. “We shall have a hot journey.”
Gaston looked over his shoulder at the quivering rim of gold that surged up behind the Bakhtiari mountains. How sharp and purple they were, against what a deepening blue! On the bluff the white-clad peasant stood with his back to the light, his hands folded in front of him, his head bowed.
“You look tired, Gaston,” said Magin pleasantly. “Will you have this cigar?”
“No thank you,” replied Gaston. He felt in his own pockets, however, first for a cigarette and then for a match. He was indeed tired, so tired that he no longer remembered which pocket to fumble in or what he held in his hand as he fumbled. Ah, that sacred tank! Then he suddenly smiled again, looking at Magin. “There is something else I can do!”
“What?” asked Magin as he lay at ease in the stern, enjoying the first perfume of his cigar. “Youcan’t go back to France, now, and I should hardly advise you to go back to Sheleilieh. At least until after the war. Then you will find no more English there to ask you troublesome questions!”
Gaston lighted his cigarette. And, keeping his eyes on Magin, he slowly moved his hand, in which were both the nickel cap and the still burning match, toward the mouth of the tank.
“This!” he answered.
Magin watched him. He did not catch the connection at first. He saw it quickly enough, however. In his pale translucent eyes there was something very like a flare.
“Look out—or we shall go together after all!”
“We shall go together, after all,” repeated Gaston. “And here is your place in the sun!”
Magin still watched, as the little flame flickered through the windless air. But he did not move.
“It will go out! And you have not the courage, Apache!”
“You will see, Prussian!” The match stopped, at last, above the open hole. But the hand that held it trembled a little, and so did the strange low voice that said: “This at least I can do—for that great lady, far away....”
The peasant on the bluff, prostrated toward Mecca with his forehead in the dust, was startled out of his prayer by a roar in the basin below him. Therewhere the trimwhite jinn-boat of theFirengihad been was now a blazing mass of wreckage, out of which burst fierce cracklings, hissings, cries, sounds not to be named.
As he stared at it the wreckage fell apart, began to disappear in a cloud of smoke and steam that lengthened toward the southern gateway of the basin. And in the turbid water, cut by swift sharks’ fins, he saw a sudden streak of scarlet, vivider than any fire or sunrise. The sounds ceased, the dyed waters paled, the smoke melted after the steam, the current caught the last charred fragments of wreckage and drew them out of sight.
The peasant watched it all in silence, as if waiting for some new sorcery of theFirengi, from his high bank of the Karun—that snow-born river bound for distant palms, that had seen so many generations of the faces of men, so many of the barks to which men trust their hearts, their hopes, their treasures, as it wound, century after century, from the mountains to the sea.
Then, at last, the peasant folded his hands anew and bowed his head toward Mecca.