By Far Euphrates: A Tale. Deborah Alcock

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 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 father said. 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 about her 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 surroundings of 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 that tebish. 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 a thought-string like that to help her." (Both Turks and Armenians are accustomed, when thinking or talking, to finger strings of beads, called tebishes, 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 such very hard 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 СКАЧАТЬ