GATHERING STORMS
"If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting
of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter:
for He that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be
higher than they."--_Eccles._ v. 8.
After this adventure Jack matured much more quickly. His manhood grew in
him apace, and with it came courage and energy, and the spirit of
enterprise. He thought often of England now, wondering at the silence
and inaction of all his relatives. That, _before_ he wrote to them, they
made no sign, he would not have wondered at, if he had known all the
truth. The Syrian servants of his father, who had abandoned him in his
illness and stolen his baggage, brought back word to Aleppo that both
father and son were dead of the fever. For obvious reasons they did not
remain in the city; but the story came to the ears of the Consul, and he
had no reason to doubt its truth. He opened some letters which had been
sent to him for Grayson, and having thus discovered his brother's
address, wrote to tell him what had happened.
Ignorant of all this, Jack was sometimes tempted to unkind thoughts of
his relatives in England. He even occasionally allowed himself to think,
with a touch of bitterness, that they were finding the Grayson money
very convenient, and that it might go hard with them to give it up if he
should reappear. But the thought, like snow in a warm climate, did not
_rest_. Jack's was essentially a generous nature. It was an added
wonder, however, even greater than the first, that they never answered
the letter sent them through Thomassian.
But wondering and watching was idle work; and Jack, now a man grown,
began to ask himself why, if he really wanted to go to England, he did
_not_ go? It would be difficult, and it might be dangerous, but all the
better for that! What hindered his borrowing a horse, asking Hohannes to
give him whatever remained--if anything did remain--of his father's
money, hiring a Turkish servant, and making a dash for Aleppo? Once
there, the Consul would help him; and soon after his return to England
he would be of age, and able to act for himself.
What hindered him? Certainly not the perils of the way, though these
were very real. He had passed beyond that stage now, finally and for
ever. The thought of peril, far from daunting him, now made his blood
tingle in his veins. Then what hindered him? He was an Englishman, and
he had his life to live, his inheritance to claim, his birthright to
recover. But still more he was something else, and that something--not
yet expressed, not yet acknowledged even in the depths of his own
heart--held him fast in the little town by far Euphrates.
At Shushan's first home-coming he had been very shy of her. But in
brotherly intercourse that had worn off, and a pleasant "camaraderie"
had grown up between them. He read English with her, using the two books
he had, his father's Bible and "Westward Ho"; and she had an Armenian
Bible which they used to compare with the English. Well she loved its
sweet words of promise, and often she would point them out to Jack and
to Gabriel, who generally shared the lessons. But their talks were not
all grave; they had many a quiet laugh together over her broken English,
and sometimes Jack would tell her stories of his own country, and of
things that happened there.
She in return would talk of Urfa: of the dear American school, of her
beloved Elmas Stepanian, and her other friends. She would describe the
American ladies of the Mission: tall, grave Miss Celandine, revered as
a mother, and her bright young colleague Miss Fairchild; Jack's
fair-haired lady of the ferry-boat, whom, however, he entirely failed to
recognise from her description.
But since the battle with the dogs and the gift of the towels, his
shyness had returned in full force. So much so that when, with great
trouble, he caught in hunting, and brought back to her, one of the
pretty little gazelles the Armenians love to keep as pets, it cost him
more trouble still to present his offering. But he was rewarded by the
light in Shushan's lovely face, and the smile with which she spoke her
gentle "Much very thanks, Master John."
Yet the passion that began to grow in John Grayson's heart was two-fold.
Love and burning indignation were so closely twined together, that he
could not have severed them if he tried. As his whole development since
his illness had been slow, so it was but slowly and gradually that he
grew to understand the conditions under which Shushan and all the rest
were living. But when he came to realize them fully, he wished at first
to escape and fight his way to the coast, so as anyhow and on any terms
to get out of that horrible country. But he wished afterwards to stay,
and stand side by side and shoulder to shoulder with these, the
desolate and oppressed, whom he so loved.
Never, perhaps, has oppression been at once so comprehensive and so
minute. The iron entered into their souls; and at the same time their
fingers were vexed with innumerable pin pricks. Jack had seen a hundred
times, without much notice, the rude wooden ploughs in use in the
district--mere hurdles with pieces of iron stuck in the end; but one day
it occurred to him, on some provocation, to abuse them roundly, and to
ask if there was not a smith in the country who could make a decent
ploughshare.
"Our smiths could make anything yours could," said Avedis, with whom he
was walking.
"Then why don't they?"
"I thought you knew." He lowered his voice and whispered,
"_Daajek_"--the Turk.
"You mean they won't allow you?"
Avedis nodded. "Wait till we get home," he said.
The conversation was resumed, where alone such conversations were safe,
though not always even there, within closed doors.
"I know," said Jack, "that the Turks hate machinery."
"They detest it, and they fear it. They think every machine the work of
Shaytan--the Devil."
"I can't help thinking," said Jack, "of the Dark Ages, and of what I
read of them before I came. Here are men of the twelfth century, with
their feet on the necks of men of the nineteenth. It's bad for both.
_They_ must be puzzled with you, and afraid of you, as a Norman Baron
would have been of his Saxon serfs if they had understood all about
steam and electricity, while he thought those things mysterious works of
the Devil. But I wonder how long he could have kept them serfs?"
"As long as he had arms, and they had none. More especially if he was
backed up from outside," Avedis answered sadly. Then he sang softly, as
if to himself, two lines of an old Armenian national song--
"If I cannot have a Christian home,
I will have a Christian grave."
"Yon Effendi," he resumed, "their hate of us is growing every day. And
now, I think, they mean to make a full end of us."
For rumours of terrible and wholesale massacres were reaching them every
day. Now it was about Sassoun, now about Zeitun, now about Marash and
Trebizond, that these things were whispered from lip to lip. Such
rumours kept them in a continual state of apprehension and panic; for
they knew not what to believe, and had no means of learning the truth.
It was easier to know in England what happened in any town of Armenia
than to know it in another town of the same country. The Turks of
Biridjik triumphed openly; and some of them boasted to their Giaour
neighbours that they would soon have all that belonged to them. Some of
the Christians thought they were all sure to be murdered; others
remembered there had been just such a scare seventeen or eighteen years
before, but that then it had come to nothing; so they thought that now
also things would just go on as usual, neither better nor worse. Others
again thought anything between the two extremes that their fears or
their fancies prompted.
John Grayson thought, for one, that certainly for the present he would
stay where he was. "It is not in the hour of danger one rides away and
leaves one's friends behind," he said to himself.
More than four years had passed now since his first coming to the
country. He was twenty years of age, full six feet with his slippers
off, with light brown hair and beard, fair complexion well tanned by the
sun, English blue eyes, and frank, fearless English face.