When Cydnus bore the Taurus snows
To sweeten Cleopatra's keels,
And rippled in the breeze that sings
From Kara Dagh, where leafy wings
Of flowers fall and gloaming steals
The colors of the blowing rose,
Old were the wharves and woods and ways--
Older the tale of steel and fire,
Involved intrigue, envenomed plan,
Man marketing his brother man
By dread duress to glut desire.
No peace was in those olden days.
Hope like the gorgeous rose sun-warmed
Blossomed and blew away and died,
Till gentleness had ceased to be
And Tarsus knew no chivalry
Could live an hour by Cydnus' side
Where all the heirs of evil swarmed.
And yet--with every swelling spring
Each pollen-scented zephyr's breath
Repeats the patient news to ears
Made dull by dreams of loveless years,
"It is of life, and not of death
That ye shall hear the Cydnus sing!"
We awoke amid sounds unexplainable. Most of the Moslems had finished
their noisy ritual ablutions, and at dawn we had been dimly conscious
of the strings of camels, mules and donkeys jingling out under the
arch beneath us. Yet there was a great din from the courtyard of
wild hoofs thumping on the dung, and of scurrying feet as if a mile-long
caravan were practising formations.
So we went out to yawn, and remained, oblivious of everything but
the cause of all the noise, we leaning with elbows on the wooden
rail, and she laughing up at us at intervals.
The six Zingarri, or gipsies, had pitched their tent in the very
middle of the yard, ambitious above all other considerations to keep
away from walls. It was a big, low, black affair supported on short
poles, and subdivided by them into several compartments. One could
see unshapely bulges where women did the housekeeping within.
But the woman who held us spell-bound cared nothing for Turkish
custom--a girl not more than seventeen years old at the boldest guess.
She was breaking a gray stallion in the yard, sitting the frenzied
beast without a saddle and doing whatever she liked with him, except
that his heels made free of the air, and he went from point to point
whichever end up best pleased his fancy.
Travelers make an early start in Asia Minor, but the yard was by
no means empty yet; some folk were still waiting on the doubtful
weather. Her own people kept to the tent. Whoever else had business
in the yard made common cause and cursed the girl for making the
disturbance, frightening camels, horses, asses and themselves. And
she ignored them all, unless it was on purpose that she brought her
stallion's heels too close for safety to the most abusive.
It was only for us two that she had any kind of friendly interest;
she kept looking up at us and laughing as she caught our eyes, bringing
her mount uprearing just beneath us several times. She was pretty
as the peep o' morning, with long, black wavy hair all loose about
her shoulders, and as light on the horse as the foam he tossed about,
although master of him without a second's doubt of it.
When she had had enough of riding--long before we were tired of the
spectacle--she shouted with a voice like a mellow bell. One of the
gipsies ran out and led away the sweating stallion, and she disappeared
into the tent throwing us a laugh over her shoulder.
"D'you suppose those gipsies are really of that Armenian's party?"
Will wondered aloud. "Now, if she were going to Zeitoon--!"
Feeling as he did, I mocked at him to hide my feelings, and we hung
about for another hour in hope of seeing her again, but she kept close.
I don't doubt she watched us through a hole in the tent. We would
have sat there alert in our chairs until evening only Fred sent a
note down to say he was well enough to leave the hospital.
We found him with his beard trimmed neatly and his fevered eyes all
bright again, sitting talking to the nurse on the veranda about a
niece of hers--Gloria Vanderman.
"Chicken in this desert!" Will wondered irreverently, and Fred, who
likes his English to have dictionary meanings, rose from his chair
in wrath. The nurse made that the cue for getting rid of us.
"Take Mr. Oakes away!" she urged, laughing. "He threatened to kill
a man this morning. There's too much murder in Tarsus now. If he
should add to it--"
"You know it wasn't on my account," Fred objected. "It was what
he wrote--and said of you. Why, he has had you prayed for publicly
by name, and you washing the brute's feet! Let me back in there
for just five minutes, and I'll show what a hospital case should
really look like!"
"Take him away!" she laughed. "Isn't it bad enough to be prayed
for? Must I get into the papers, too, as heroine of a scandal?"
The head missionary was not there to say good-by to, life in his
case being too serious an affair to waste minutes of a precious morning
on farewells, so we packed Fred into the waiting carriage and drove
all the way to Mersina, where we interrupted Monty's mid-afternoon
game of chess.
Fred Oakes and Monty were the closest friends I ever met--one problem
for an enemy--one stout, two-headed, most dependable ally for the
lucky man or woman they called friend.
"Oh, hullo!" said Monty over his shoulder, as our names were called
out by the stately consular kavass.
"Hullo!" said Fred, and shook hands with the consul.
"Thought you were due to be sick for another week?" said Monty, closing
up the board.
"I was. I would have been. Bed would have done me good, and the
nurse is a darling, old enough to be Will's mother. But they put
a biped by the name of Peter Measel in the bed next mine. He's a
missionary on his own account, and keeps a diary. Seems be contributes
to the funds of a Welsh mission in France, and they do what he says.
He has all the people he disapproves of prayed for publicly by name
in the mission hall in Marseilles, with extracts out of his diary
by way of explanation, so that the people who pray may know what
they've got on their hands. The special information I gave him about
you, Monty, will make Marseilles burn! He's got you down as a drunken
pirate, my boy, with no less than eleven wives. But he asked me
one night whether I thought what he'd written about the nurse was
strong enough, and he read it aloud to me. You'd never believe what
the reptile had dared suggest in his devil's log-book! I'm expelled
for threatening to kill him!"
"The nurse was right," said the consul gloomily. "There'll be murder
enough hereabouts--and soon!"
He was a fairly young man yet in spite of the nearly white hair over
the temples. He measured his words in the manner of a man whose
speech is taken at face value.
"The missionaries know. The governments won't listen. I've been
appealed to. So has the United States consul, and neither of us
is going to be able to do much. Remember, I represent a government
at peace with Turkey, and so does he. The Turk has a side to his
character that governments ignore. Have you watched them at prayer?"
We told him how close we had been on the previous night, and he laughed.
"Did you suppose I couldn't smell camel and khan the moment you came
in?"
"That was why Sister Vanderman hurried you off so promptly!" Fred
announced with an air of outraged truthfulness. "Faugh! Slangy
talk and stink of stables!"
"I was talking of Turks," said the consul. "When they pray, you
may have noticed that they glance to right and left. When they think
there is nobody looking they do more, they stare deliberately to
the right and left. That is the act of recognition of the angel
and the devil who are supposed to attend every Moslem, the angel
to record his good deeds and the devil his bad ones. To my mind
there lies the secret of the Turk's character. Most of the time
he's a man of his word--honest--courteous--considerate--good-humored--even
chivalrous--living up to the angel. But once in so often
he remembers the other shoulder, and then there isn't any limit to
the deviltry he'll do. Absolutely not a limit!"
"I suppose we or the Americans could land marines at a pinch, and
protect whoever asked for protection?" suggested Monty.
"No," said the consul deliberately. "Germany would object. Germany
is the only power that would. Germany would accuse us of scheming
to destroy the value of their blessed Baghdad railway."
A privy councilor of England, which Monty was, is not necessarily
in touch with politics of any sort. Neither were we; but it happened
that more than once in our wanderings about the world things had been
forced on our attention.
"They would rather see Europe burn from end to end!" Monty agreed.
"And I think there's more than that in it," said the consul. "Armenians
are not their favorites. The Germans want the trade of the Levant.
The Armenians are business men. They're shrewder than Jews and more
dependable than Greeks. It would suit Germany very nicely, I imagine,
to have no Armenians to compete with."
"But if Germany once got control of the Near East," I objected, "she
could impose her own restrictions."