By Far Euphrates A Tale 4

By Far Euphrates A Tale 4

"He is very sleepy," Jack thought, as he put on his protective

head-dress, and ran cheerfully down into the court.

 

He looked about for the servants, but could not see either of them. As

he was standing there, an open door attracted his eye, and he could not

help looking in. A woman was baking bread, in an oven consisting of a

large round hole in the clay floor of the middle of the room. She was

taking small pieces of dough from a lump beside her, slapping them on

the inside of the oven, and promptly removing those already baked

sufficiently. Two dark-eyed little boys were playing quietly at some

game on the ground, and an older lad was standing beside her, talking,

apparently about a bundle of cotton in a cloth which he held by the four

corners.

 

Raising her eyes for a moment from her oven and her dough, the woman saw

the stranger at the door. He did not know a word of Armenian, nor she a

word of English, but she saluted him with great courtesy, bowing almost

to the ground; then, as she rose slowly, touching her heart, her lips,

and her forehead. The children did the same; the youngest acting his

little part so prettily that Jack fell in love with him on the spot. As

the woman, by signs, invited him to enter, he did so, and the children

placed a cushion for him in the corner farthest from the door. The older

boy brought him sherbet, flavoured and tinted with rosewater.

 

"This is all very nice," thought Jack. "Still, when one pays a visit one

is expected to talk. And how can I talk to people who don't know a word

of my language, nor I a word of theirs?"

 

He tried to solve the difficulty by introducing himself, patting his

own breast and forehead, and repeating, "John--John Grayson," an

experiment attended with only partial success, his new friends learning

to call him "Yon Effendi." Then he pulled out his schoolboy silver watch

for their edification. The two little boys, who stood gazing at him with

their great black eyes, evidently thought he was a far greater wonder

himself; but the elder looked at it intelligently, as one who perfectly

knew its use.

 

He tried next to get at their names, pointing to each in turn with a

look of inquiry. As well as he could make out the unfamiliar sounds, he

thought the eldest boy called himself something like Kevork, the second

was certainly Gabriel, the youngest probably Hagop. He took Gabriel's

little brown hand in his own large one, whereupon the child stooped

down, kissed the hand that held his, and touched it with his forehead.

 

Fearing that he was interrupting the baking operations, he soon rose to

go. He happened to notice a picture on the wall; or rather a coloured

daub in staring blue, red, and green, representing an impossible

warrior, running an impossible sword through the heart of a monster

three or four times as large as himself. Seeing him look at it, the

woman and the eldest boy began an explanation in which he could only

distinguish one of the 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

 

"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.