By Far Euphrates: A Tale. Deborah Alcock

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СКАЧАТЬ names he had just heard—"Kevork." He thought they meant that it belonged to Kevork; and did not find out until long afterwards that "Kevork" is one of the Armenian forms of "George," and that he had lighted upon a picture of the patron saint of his own land, slaying the traditional dragon.

      He left his new friends after a silent exchange of courtesies; and, forgetting all about the servants he ought to have looked for, began to descend the crooked, winding steps, or streets, that led down to the river. Presently he heard a patter of feet behind him, and, looking back, saw Gabriel trotting after him. The child came up, and held out to him a little roll of something yellow, with what looked like the kernels of nuts in it. It was evidently to be eaten, for Gabriel, smiling, pointed to his mouth; so Jack sat down on one of the steps and made his first acquaintance with the Armenian delicacy called bastuc, a preparation of grape sugar, into which the kernels of nuts are sometimes put. He liked it at first; but it soon palled, and he began to fancy it was making him sick. Whatever was the cause, a strange faintness and dizziness came over him as he sat there by the river. "It is too hot here," he thought. "I must go back." He got up, but found it a hard matter to keep his feet. Twice or thrice, as he toiled up the steps, he was obliged to sit down and rest. Little Gabriel had stayed beside him, and he was very glad of it, as without a guide he would almost certainly have missed the gate of the house where their quarters were, since all the houses, built in the same way about their court-yards, looked so exactly alike. Feeling worse every minute, he stumbled up the stairs, threw the door open, and got into the room just in time to fall down in a faint.

      When he came to himself, he was lying on one of the beds; and his father, stooping anxiously over him, put a glass to his lips, from which he drank obediently.

      "How do you feel now, my son?" he asked.

      "Oh! all right," Jack said. "I don't know what came over me down there by the river. I suppose it was the sun. But I am better. I can get up."

      "Don't. Lie still and give me your hand. I want to feel your pulse."

      Jack gave it.

      "Father," he said, looking up, "your own hand is shaking. Is there anything wrong?"

      "Not much, I hope. You are a little hot and feverish. A dose of quinine will do you no harm."

      "Hot!" said Jack. "No; I am shivering with cold. I can't keep still."

      The dose was administered; and Jack, following his father's movements with his eyes, noticed that he took one himself also.

      "Now, my boy," he said, "you have not slept for nearly four and twenty hours, and you spent all last night in the saddle. Unless you take a good rest, you may be ill. Lie as quiet as you can, and try to sleep."

      "I will, father; but—I'm so thirsty!"

      His father gave him some sherbet, and covered him up comfortably with a silk rug. Then he sat down, and took out his note-book and pencil; but he wrote only a few words in a faint, irregular hand, difficult to decipher: "Have heard from Jacob, my Syrian, that the plain we have just traversed is noted for its deadly malaria—is, in fact, a perfect hotbed of fever. I fear John has it."

      After some time Jack dropped off into a troubled doze. Strange dreams came to him, ending usually in some catastrophe that made him start up in sudden fright. Once he thought he was walking by the river, and somehow lost his footing and fell in. He woke up with a cry, "The water is so cold—so dark!" His father was at his side and soothed him.

      "Don't you remember," he said, "the dark river turns to light?"

      But as soon as the boy was quiet and at rest again, John Grayson added one more to the records in his note-book, and it was almost illegible: "We have both caught the fever. God help us! If I can, I will arrange——"

Chapter IV A NEW LIFE

       Table of Contents

      "Among new men, strange faces, other minds."

       —Tennyson.

      After that, for young John Grayson, life was a blank. Dim shadows came and went like reflections in a mirror, having no continuity and leaving no impression. In a passing way, as a dumb creature might, he felt burning heat and freezing cold, pain and weariness, and nameless, indescribable distress. So too he saw forms around him—kind, dark-complexioned people, who gave him things to drink, and spoke to him in words he could not understand. Sometimes he was conscious of a sort of dull relief, or pleasure, when they cooled his burning brow with snow, which had been brought from the mountains packed in straw, and carefully preserved. But throughout all he missed something—some one. At first he knew that he wanted his father, and used to call for him piteously. But this passed at length; he grew too weak even for the pain of longing. With the very ill, as with the very old, "desire fails."

      Yet, in spite of all, he crept slowly back to life. One day he felt himself carried somewhere, and then became suddenly conscious of a delicious coolness after what seemed a lifetime of burning heat. Looking up presently, when the sense of fatigue had somewhat passed, he saw that he was lying on a large bedstead, like one of our old "four-posters," in the open air. There were white curtains all around him, which were being softly stirred by a refreshing breeze; while over his head—no roof between, not even the canvas of a tent—glowed the deep, rich blue of the Eastern sky. He was on the house-top.

      For a while after that he recovered more quickly. But the hot weather, coming early that year, brought on a sore relapse, and again for many days his life was despaired of. More than once the watchers thought he was actually gone, and often they thought the question was one of hours. Yet in the end the long conflict of death and life ended in the victory—the slow, uncertain victory—of the latter.

      He came back to life like a little child only just beginning it. For the time, his past was completely blotted out. Too weak in mind and body for connected thought, he accepted the things about him without question. He seemed to have been always there, amongst those dark-eyed people, who sat upon the ground, ate rice and bulghour, and wore striped "zebouns" of cotton cloth, and many-coloured jackets. He picked up their speech very quickly, as a child picks up his mother tongue; and at this stage did not remember his own. He came to know those about him, and to call them by their names. Between twenty and thirty persons dwelt in the large house in which he was a guest. But they were all one family—the sons and sons-in-law, the daughters and daughters-in-law, and a whole tribe of the grandchildren of a grey-haired patriarch called Hohannes Meneshian. The whole household were Jack's familiar friends. But he loved best the three boys who had been his first acquaintances, and their mother Mariam Hanum, who throughout his illness had been his devoted nurse. He liked the gentle touch of her hand, and the tenderness in her eyes as she looked at him. Sometimes he called her Mya—"Mother," as the boys did.

      Of the three—Kevork, Gabriel, and little Hagop—Gabriel was his favourite. Indeed the child was like his shadow, waiting on him continually, and often bringing him beautiful flowers—gorgeous pomegranate blossoms, or roses of many kinds and of most exquisite perfume. Or he would bring him fruit—delicious grapes, pears, plums, and peaches. Or sometimes he would just steal silently up to kiss his hand, and touch it with his forehead, or stand or sit quietly beside him.

      There was one thing that soothed him inexpressibly; though, like all else, it was accepted without question or comprehension. When Mariam and the other women went about the household tasks that, as he grew better, he liked to watch, they would say, "Hesoos ockna menk"—"Jesus, help us." When they finished, they СКАЧАТЬ