By Far Euphrates: A Tale. Deborah Alcock

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 these people, 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 on pretence 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, that which 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 story of 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 Gregorian Church 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 СКАЧАТЬ