GIVEN BACK FROM THE DEAD
"When we can love and pray over all and through all, the battle's
past and the victory's come--glory be to God!"
--"_Uncle Tom's Cabin._"
One day Jack roused himself to go to the desolated house of the
Vartonians. Very few of the surviving Armenians dared to be seen walking
in their own Quarter; and, it was said by an eye-witness, no man was
ever seen to walk upright there. They crept furtively about with bowed
heads, slipping from shadow to shadow, afraid of the face of day and the
eyes of their fellow men.
Jack's object in going was to find, if possible, his father's note-book,
which he had entrusted to Kevork to give Shushan in case of his own
death. It was to him a very precious relic, and he thought it might
probably be amongst the things that had escaped the plunderers, as there
was nothing in its plain appearance and binding to attract them.
It was agony to enter that blood-stained court, knowing all that had
happened there, and to pass through those desolate rooms, associated in
his mind with all the pleasant trifles of domestic life, thinking that
every voice which he had heard there, save Gabriel's, was now hushed in
death: every foot that trod those floors was dust. Even that dust had no
quiet resting-place in the shadow of a Christian church. Those horrible
trenches outside the gate, those hotbeds of fever and pestilence, told
that, if the living were dumb, a cry that "shivered to the tingling
stars" was going up from the desecrated dead.
Jack passed sadly through the rooms he knew, yet did _not_ know as they
looked now, but failed in any of them to find what he sought. At last he
came to a chamber upstairs, where he was startled to see a human figure
lying at full length on the floor. If it were a dead man, the death must
have been very recent. But when he came near he saw at once that this
was not death, but quiet, natural sleep. The man's dress was _à la
Frank_, good and new; and his side face, which was all Jack could see,
had the look of life, almost of health.
It had a look besides which made Jack cry aloud in amazement,
"Kevork!--my brother!"
The voice aroused the sleeper. He sat up and looked about him. "Who is
it?" he asked. Then, after a moment's astonished gaze, "If Yon
Effendi's father were not dead, I would think he had come to look for
his son in this charnel house!"
"Brother, I _am_ Yon Effendi. How have you come back to us from the
dead?"
"What does it matter? Are they not dead, all of them? You too, they told
me you perished in the burning church."
"And they told _us_ your throat was cut."
Kevork put his hand to his throat, where a red mark still remained. "The
work was done, but not well enough," he said. "Would it had been! Why
spare this blood, of which no drop flows any more in the veins of any
living man?"
"That is not true, Kevork. Gabriel lives."
"Gabriel? How did he escape? Not--not--do not say he denied the
faith!--not _Gabriel_."
"No; he was heroically faithful. He was left for dead, but he lives
still. How he will rejoice to see you again, my brother!"
A deeper shade passed over the face of Kevork, and he stretched out his
hand to Jack. "My _brother_," he repeated, pausing on the word. At last
he went on in a low voice, "I know all--_the worst_;--your anguish and
mine are the same. Our Shushan and Oriort Elmas----"
"Are _saved_--SAVED!" Jack cried, pressing his hand in a mighty grasp,
and looking in his sorrowful face, his own radiant with thankfulness.
"_My_ treasure is safe in heaven, yours still on earth--in the Mission
House with Miss Celandine. _All_ the Pastor's children have been
rescued, and are there, thank God!"
Kevork Meneshian bowed his head, and did what John Grayson himself had
done in the hour of his blessed relief from an anguish too great for
tears. Jack let him weep for a while, then he said gently, "Come,
brother, let me bring you to our friends, who will rejoice over you as
over one given back to them from the dead."
On the way Kevork told his story. "That morning," he said, "when we knew
what was coming, I went to fetch our grandfather, that we might all die
together. There was no more danger, and no less, in the street than at
home; but I was soon caught by the Turks."
"Yes," said Jack; "that we heard; and your throat was cut."
"There is the mark. But there were a hundred of us, so the sheikh's hand
grew weary ere he finished. I was near the end of the long line, and I
only got a hasty gash. I did not even lose consciousness; but I was
afraid to stir, so I lay there in my pain, thinking I should bleed to
death. By-and-by some soldiers came along, and looked at the bodies.
They saw I was not dead, and were going to finish me, when a Turk
interposed, and bade them let me alone. He had hard work to protect me
from them, nor did he succeed without striking one of them pretty
sharply with the butt end of his gun. Then I saw his face, and
recognised that Osman we met once or twice--a friend of the Pastor's."
"Osman! He told me he rescued an Armenian, an acquaintance. I wonder he
did not name you."
"Where did you meet him?"
"We were together in the prison."
"I suppose he suspected some spy within hearing. Well, he took me to his
house, bound up my wound, and hid me in an inner chamber. There he left
me, promising soon to return; but for three days and nights I saw him
not again, nor any one. You may guess what I suffered shut up there,
thinking of all our friends."
"And you must have been nearly starved."
"No; he left me some food, though I was too miserable to care for it. At
last he came, and told me he had been imprisoned for assaulting the
soldier who wanted to kill me; his relatives, as he suspected, having
contrived the thing to keep him out of harm's way, since he knew they
thought him lacking in a proper zeal for Islam. But, on my account, and
still more on that of the Badvellie's children, whom he wanted to save,
he had been very eager to get out, and managed it at last, with large
backsheesh. He told me all the terrible news--of those who were dead,
and of those who, less happy, were living still."
After a sad pause he went on. "For myself, I am grateful to him. He
supplied all my wants, and kept me concealed there many days. At last,
yesterday, he came to me and said, 'I can hide you no longer. People are
beginning to suspect something. If they find you, they will kill you,
and kill me also for giving you shelter.' I said, 'For myself I care
not, for what have I left to live for?' but added that I could not bear
he should suffer on my account. So he said the best he could do for me
was to give me a Frank dress, arranged as Mussulmans wear it, and money
enough to keep me for the present. Which he did, and may God reward him,
and number him--if it so may be with any Turk--amongst His redeemed!"
"Amen!" Jack said. He did not like to tell Kevork, what Osman evidently
had not told him, that the father of Oriort Elmas had fallen by his
hand. There was no need for more, for now they were at the gate of the
Mission House. "It is best," Jack said, "that I should bring you first
to Miss Celandine; she will know what to do. For we must not tell
Gabriel too suddenly; he is ill and weak. You must be prepared, Kevork,
to see him greatly changed."
Yet the meeting between the brothers seemed to fan the feeble,
flickering spark of Gabriel's life into a flame. It was another tie to
earth to feel he had one brother there left him still--"No, _two_
brothers," as he said, looking lovingly at Jack.
A little while afterwards, Jack was sent for one day by Miss Celandine.
"Franks have come to her from Aintab," said the excited messenger.
Delighted to think that Miss Celandine's long loneliness was over, Jack
went to her at once. He found her in earnest converse with a grey-haired
American missionary, whom, in introducing Jack to him, she called Dr.
Sandeman. Then she said to Jack, "I want you very much, Mr. Grayson.
Baron Vartonian is in there," glancing at the door of an inner room. "He
came with Dr. Sandeman. He has just heard that of all his large family
there remains to him now not one. You know more about them than any one
else who is living now, save Gabriel. Will you go in and speak to him,
and comfort him if you can?"
Though his heart fainted within him at the thought of such a sorrow,
Jack went into the inner room. There were two persons there. Old Baron
Vartonian sat on the divan, his head bowed down upon both his hands, his
face hidden. Now and then the sound of low, deep moans--such moans as
only come from a strong man's deepest heart--broke the stillness.
Beside him stood a young man with a face incredibly pale and worn and
wasted, as if with some great agony, though its look was one of past
rather than of present suffering.
"The look of one that had travailed sore,
But whose pangs were ended now."
His hand was laid tenderly, and with a caressing touch, on the old man's
shoulder; for that was all the human sympathy he was able to bear just
yet. He motioned Jack to sit on the divan. "You were their friend, you
loved them," he said.
"And received from them much kindness," Jack answered in a low voice.
After a pause he went on, "She that was dearer to me than my life was as
a child in their house. It was they who brought her to the Mission
School, where such joy and help were given her."
"Why do I live?" the old man broke out suddenly. "It is wrong! It is
horrible! It is against nature! No reaper reaps the green and leaves the
ripe. No gardener leaves the dry stick in the ground and uproots the
flourishing tree. I am alone--alone--alone! I came back, after all those
long months of suffering, thinking, 'now I will rest, now I will end my
days in my home with my dear ones; my son--my firstborn--shall close my
eyes, and my children, and my children's children, shall lay me in the
grave.' And I find all gone--sons and sons' sons, with the mothers and
the children, and the children's children--even the little babe I had
never seen. Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"
Then letting his hands fall and looking at the two who stood beside him:
"But I do not believe it. It is not possible. Surely _one_ at least is
left alive. Let us go and see."
The pale-faced young man rose also. "It were best for us to bring him to
his own house," he said to Jack. "Perhaps, when he sees it, he will be
able to weep."
So Jack went, for the second time, to the house of the Vartonians. The
old man, burdened with a weight of sorrow nature seemed scarce able to
bear, asked them after a while to leave him in the family living-room,
which had been the centre of his home. While he sat there, alone with
his memories and his God, the two young men waited together in the
court.
Jack found that his companion was a theological student almost ready for
the ministry, to which he had been looking forward with eager hope, when
one day he was suddenly seized by zaptiehs and flung into a dungeon. Dr.
Sandeman--who was to him as a father, young Mardiros Vahanian said with
kindling eyes--had done all in his power to help him, or even to find
out of what he was accused. At last it was discovered that another
person had been arrested, upon whom there was found an English newspaper
containing a notice of the massacre at Sassoun. This man, probably under
torture, said that he had it from young Vahanian,--and that was all his
crime. On one occasion Dr. Sandeman got leave to visit him, though he
only saw him in the presence of Turks, and was only allowed to speak to
him in Turkish. As they parted, he ventured to whisper in English just
this, "Do not give up hope"--and terrible things had the poor lad
suffered afterwards on account of this one word. Not then, and not at
any time from his own lips, did Jack hear the true story of that prison
year, heaped with agonies, with tortures, and with outrages to us
happily inconceivable.
During a short time, towards the end, he had shared the cell of Baron
Vartonian, who also had been imprisoned on some futile charge. A strong
friendship had grown up between the young man and the old, thus thrown
together; and now, in the old man's utter loneliness and desolation,
Vahanian wished to take the place of a son, and to cherish and comfort
him.
Jack could not help doubting, when he looked at him, that he would be
long left in the world to comfort any one. But not liking to express
his doubt, he asked him how it was that in the end he got out of prison.
"I do not very well know," the young man answered. "Dr. Sandeman never
ceased to work for me; and I think that, somehow, he got the British
Consul interested in my case, and that he interceded for me, as I know
he did for Baron Vartonian, against whom indeed there was no charge that
the Turks themselves believed in. It was one of those false accusations
that any man can get a Turk to bring against a Christian for a couple of
medjids, and the hiring of two false witnesses to back him up; and
Christians being disqualified from bearing witness in a court of law,
the accused of course has no chance of proving his innocence. However,
thanks, I suppose, to the Consul, Baron Vartonian was released, and so
was I."
Jack asked him if he thought he was recovering his health.
"Oh yes, I grow stronger every day. If you had seen me when I first came
out of prison, you would wonder at the change." So he said; but Jack
wondered, instead, what he could possibly have looked like then.
"No doubt," he said, "while you were in prison, you often wished to
die."
"I did--_sometimes_," he answered, his eyes kindling--"not that I might
be away from my pain, but that I might be with my Saviour. But for the
most part, I felt Him so near me there, that I thought death itself
could scarcely bring us any closer."
Jack's look softened. "In spite of all your suffering, I call you
blessed," he said in a low voice. "Still, after all, that was knowing
Him by faith. In heaven, it will be sight."
"Which will be different, and _must_ be better, though it is hard to see
how it can. I thought I knew something before of the mystery of
communion with Him, but I felt as if I had never tasted it till then. I
did not know there could be such peace, such joy."
"Has it stayed with you since you came out?"
"No, and yes. When a child is hurt, the mother takes it in her arms and
fondles it; when it is well, she lets it run by her side. But she does
not love it the less."
"Perhaps it seems strange to you now to come back to life? Perhaps you
would rather not?"
"I would rather die, you think, and go to Him? Not just yet. There are
too many in the world that He wants me to help."
"Like these poor people here who have suffered so much?"
"Yes; but there are those more worthy of our pity than even they."
"_More_ worthy? Truly on God's earth it seems to me that there are none.
But I know what you mean," Jack added in a lower voice. "You are
thinking of those, in harems or elsewhere,--for whom we only dare to ask
one thing--_death_"
Vahanian's face grew sad. It was some moments before he spoke again. At
last he said, "There are those still more pitiable. No man has
compassion--no man cares for the soul of--the Turk."
Jack started, as if he had been shot. "How _could_ we?" he asked.
"Yet you say every day, 'Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them
that trespass against us.'"
"I never thought of it in that way. And I tell you, if I ever get back
to England, I will _not_ forgive the Turk! I will _not_ keep silence
about his evil deeds, about the things I have seen and heard of here!"
"Nor should you. To stop them would be to show the very kindness of God
even to the Turk himself. But I would it were God's will to stop them,
not with His wrath, but with His love."
"How could that be?"
"As he stopped St. Paul's. Do you not believe Christ died for the Turk
as well as for the Christian?"
"He died for all," Jack said reverently. "And I know He commands us to
forgive. But this thing is not possible--to man. And yet, it is strange,
but I remember that when I was led out to die, as I thought, by their
hands, I felt no anger against them--indeed I scarcely thought of them
at all. Yet afterwards, when I knew _all_ they had done, I could have
torn them limb from limb."
"Friend, you suffered more than I, because you suffered in others. It is
only written 'when they revile _you_,--persecute _you_.' But am I to
think God has no better thing for you than what He gave me? Because I
have had a few drops of this wine of His, of which He drank Himself, am
I to doubt that He can fill the cup for you, even to the brim? It is for
our sorest needs that He keeps His best cordials. And now I will go back
again to my friend, Baron Vartonian. I think he has been long enough
alone."
He went, and Jack looked after him, wondering,--and learning a new
lesson of what Christ can do for His suffering servants.
This is no fiction, it is literal truth. Except, indeed, that these poor
words fail to convey the depth and intensity of the pitying love, which
Divine grace had kindled in that young heart for those at whose hands he
had suffered such things.