knee. When I left our room, I went to Herbert's wardrobe and put his
overcoat on. In one pocket I stuffed Educator crackers out of the box
you sent. Some fell on the floor and I left them there. A wee knitted
hug-me-tight went into another, and into a third pocket I put the silk
American flag Clement gave me when I was married. Miss Talbot is lying
down on a cot in our study. Being a Britisher, she is able to sleep.
Before I left her in the study, I got out the filing case containing
Herbert's thesis. I put it down by the door here in Mary's room, right
close to my feet. Then I lay down on the floor with my bundle as a
pillow.
* * * * *
We, from our darkened room where that blessed baby Rogers is sleeping
quietly, have been looking out of the window. Two or three Turks pushed
a pump affair up in front of a house near by. "Humanity is not dead
yet!" I thought, "they are going to try to limit the fire." The water
streamed from the hose and it was kerosene. They soaked the roof. Little
fingers of flame began waving in the wind. Heavy black smoke is hanging
over the town. We can feel the hot air and smell the oil--like a
gigantic smoking lamp. Sparks fell on the windowsill just now as I stood
there. I patted them with my hands and put them out, but not before they
burned little holes in the wood.
We closed the blinds and sat down cross-legged on the floor and talked
quietly. About being widows. The boys must soon come back to us--either
that, or they are dead. We wondered which one of us was a widow. Perhaps
both.
Once Mary asked me: "Brownie, what are you praying for?" "Goodness,
Mary, I don't know what I am praying for. Guess I have just got to live
with my soul opened toward Heaven." A little later Mary spoke again,
this time cheerfully, for she had thought of something: "I know, let's
pray for the wind to change."
Sure enough, it was blowing in our direction. We went to the window
again, never thinking of danger. _You cannot consistently keep your mind
on danger to yourself._ As we looked, the flames were lying low, blue
tipped with yellow, and reaching towards us. We concentrated on a change
of the wind, and there was a change. The flames instead of lying low
were vertical, licking and swaying. Then they lay low again, this time
back on the ruined buildings. This may have been coincidence. You may
think so if you like. But I believe I saw the hand of the Lord come down
and forbid those flames to move farther. Never again will I have to be
reasoned with to believe in miracles.
FOOTNOTE:
[4] As a result of his heroism, Socrates (that is not his real name, but
never mind) has been our ward ever since. With what aid we could give
ourselves, and the help of friends to whom we have told this story,
Socrates finished his college course at Tarsus, took a year in medicine
at Beirut, and has since been studying at the Turkish Medical School in
Constantinople. Despite the difficulty of communications between Paris
and Constantinople, we have been able to follow him and help him without
interruption during the years of the war in Europe. Socrates will have
his medical degree in the spring of 1917. He is a loyal Turkish subject,
and has done splendid work in ministering to the wounded in the Balkan
War and in the present war. When the Bulgarians were attacking the
defenses of Constantinople, we loaned him to Major Doughty-Wylie, who
was at that time in charge of the British field ambulance work. Major
Doughty-Wylie recommended him for the British Red Cross medal.
LIFE AND DEATH
_Tarsus,
Saturday,
April seventeenth,
Sometime in the morning._
Mother dear:
Once that wind changed, we slept. Mary and I slept from one to three.
Baby Rogers is a good little chap. Yes, my dear, "I laid me down and
slept. I awaked, for the Lord sustained me." This is the way to learn a
text--live it.
When we got awake, it was daylight. Shouting again at the gate. I ran to
my study window that looks down into the street outside of the gate.
Excited men were pushing and struggling. Their cries were shrill. My
heart sank. Was the killing to be renewed under our eyes? Then Mary
said, "They are selling bread, and want six _metallics_ a loaf." The
business of life goes on in spite of cataclysms. Selling bread! In the
midst of life we are in death. Yes, but in the midst of death we are in
life. The family goes home to dinner after the funeral. When you are
living the cataclysm, however, your vision is not adjusted to the small
events. The matter-of-fact things are happening because they always
happen and must happen.
* * * * *
A door outside slammed. Then the door into Mary's room opened. In came
Mother Christie, looking as though she hadn't slept. The steel-rimmed
spectacles used indifferently by herself and Daddy Christie, were pushed
away up on her forehead. She said briskly: "Another baby! a dear little
boy, and not a rag to put on him!" I went to my steamer trunk to fetch
three little flannel petticoats and two kimonos. Down jumped the
spectacles without her putting her hand on them. "No, no, my child, I
cannot take them." Before I had pressed them into her arms, she had
finished her protesting. Away she went, murmuring: "Give and spend and
the Lord will send. That's what you think." Well, there may be time for
me to make more petticoats.
They say that eight hundred houses have been burned. Many people were
still in the houses. If they showed themselves, or tried to get out by
windows or roofs, they were shot. It was death either way. We fear that
few Armenians are alive in Tarsus outside of our compound and in the
Catholic Mission nearby. The whole Armenian quarter, right up to my
windows, is burning. The bright blaze persists in many places where
there is yet much to feed upon.
_Saturday afternoon._
We did not think of breakfast. Mary had fallen asleep again after
nursing the baby. I munched biscuits in my bedroom, and then I undid on
the bed the bundle I had made up in the night. The piece of flannel
might be needed sooner than I could use it. So I stretched it out on the
mattress, and cut four flannel petticoats. With the blinds barricaded,
my only light was what filtered through the slits in the shutter of the
side window. I had to keep doing something, and I did not want to go out
to talk to any one. So I found my thread and thimble, and began to make
up the petticoats.
It may have been minutes or hours. I shall never know, for I had not
looked at the clock when I woke. Suddenly I heard cries outside, that
were taken up by the thousands in the college yard. In the mingling of
voices I caught my husband's name. "Steady now," I thought. "Is this
life or death?" Then Jeanne's golden head appeared at my door.
"Herbert's here," said Jeanne.
I hurried out into the study, and ran to the window with Mary and
Jeanne. Daddy Christie and Herbert were at the gate, surrounded by
regular soldiers. But we did not see the tall figure of Miner Rogers.
Joy and apprehension were strangely mingled. I ran first to the door
leading to the balcony. Up the steps came Daddy Christie. Herbert and
Henri were behind, evidently trying to keep people from following them.
Daddy Christie said, "Thank God, you're safe: where is Mary?" I led him
to our study. People seemed to rise up from nowhere, crowding about us.
Jeanne had instinctively taken Mary into her own room, and Daddy
Christie followed.
It may have been minutes or hours. I shall not know. After the lapse of
a few hours, it seems to me that I am writing fiction. Perhaps I make it
up as I go along. Never again shall I believe in the accuracy of
testimony given on the witness-stand about what happened in moments of
stress.
Turning so that I looked towards the double-doors, I saw Herbert
standing there. Surging thoughts went through me. One was that I must
not let these emotions reach the baby. I clinched will and muscles to
safeguard the little thing. The other thought was to get over beside
Herbert. As I made my way through the crowd toward the door, I thought:
have I died and Herbert too? What was that I suffered last night? How
can I know? Then the brain in my head told me: touch him, and if he is
warm, it is not death. I took his left hand in my right and with my
other hand touched his face. It was warm.
"Where is Miner Rogers?" "He is dead," came the answer. Herbert's free
hand reached back of him for the door-knob. He went slowly out on the
balcony, closing the door behind him, as if he did not know what he was
doing.
Herbert has no recollection of this meeting. We figure out that it is
because he had already been reassured about me, for he distinctly
remembers seeing me at the study window as he came through the street
below. The second his anxiety was relieved about me, his mind
concentrated on the terrible news he and Dr. Christie were bringing to
Mary.
I turned back toward the room to realize that Dr. Christie was telling
Mary. This was too much for me and I went into our bedroom beyond. One
sees on the stage, and reads in novels, meetings like this. Ours was not
dramatic. It was natural and human. Herbert was entering the bedroom
from the other door at the same moment, and when he saw me he asked:
"Can you make some tea? I am hungry."
I investigated my washstand to see what I could find in the way of food.
Two Turkish officers had followed Herbert into the bedroom. They were
hungry, too. I took the lid off the chafing-dish. Inside were bits of
bacon. The officers must have wondered why I laughed--Herbert, too.
Pent-up feelings were expressed in that laugh. I realized that I had
presence of mind enough not to give bacon to Moslems. The pig is an
unclean beast to non-Christians. Typewriters have been smuggled into
Turkey with perfect ease when packed in the middle of a box of hams.
One officer was the _Mutesarif_ of Namrun, where we spent a honeymoon
month last summer. He came, I suppose, to assure us of his friendliness.
You ought to see how he drank tea. Just like a Russian! And he stopped
eating Uneeda biscuits only when the tin was empty. The other officer
was an Albanian who spoke French. Herbert had picked him out in Adana to
bring the bodyguard of soldiers that he had compelled the Vali to give
him. Herbert says we can trust him. He is under Herbert's orders, with
the soldiers, as long as we need him. Herbert had no time to give me
details of these days. He went out with the officers as soon as he had
eaten, after telling me to stay in my rooms. Miss Talbot came in. Then
Jeanne and Mary. I could give them no word of what had happened in
Adana. They told me about Miner.
* * * * *
Herbert came back soon with Daddy Christie. They had been arranging
about posting the soldiers of Herbert's guard. But they said that the
massacre was over, and no attack against us was to be anticipated. What
they had feared was the fire. If that had driven us out in the mob----
But why talk of what might have happened? What did happen was terrible
enough. Miner gone, and with him Mr. Maurer, a Hadjin missionary, shot
dead. Herbert and Lawson Chambers, a Y.M.C.A. traveling secretary, were
down in the town when the massacre started. They did not get back to the
Armenian quarter at all. They telegraphed Major Doughty-Wylie. He and
Mrs. Doughty-Wylie took the last train that went through to Adana. The
Major was shot in the street. His arm held up in front of him saved
him. Herbert says he left him this morning in bed, and with a fever.
Daddy Christie told us what had happened at the Mission and in the
Armenian quarter. Then Herbert began his story. He had just started when
there was a knock at the door. Someone wanted Dr. Christie. He went out.
In a moment he came back and called Herbert. We waited. That is woman's
sphere--waiting.
Young Miner cried in the next room. Mary went to him. What a blessing
she had that baby! I told Jeanne she had better go and stand by her.
Herbert returned--alone. He had a bit of paper in his hand. He gave it
to me, saying that it had just been brought through from Mersina. It
read: "No ships yet--massacre expected any minute. Cannot rely on
authorities." It had been brought by an Armenian who reported the
country full of Kurds. We seemed safe for the moment in Tarsus. Herbert
put it right up to me. The Albanian officer and the soldiers were under
his command. The train he had seized in Adana was still at the station.
He could try to get down the line to Mersina. His coming--with the
soldiers--might stave off the massacre for a few hours. The ships were
bound to reach Mersina soon.
I had no choice, Mother. It all seemed so simple--the only thing to do.
It is still life or death, and we don't know which. But we do know each
step as we go along. I put my hands on Herbert's shoulders to hold
myself up. For I only pretend to strength and courage. I really have
neither. And I said to him: "You are all the world to me, but I must
remember that you are only one man to the world." He answered: "Of
course. That's the way it is. I shall try my best to get back to-night."
He kissed me and went out. We would both have lost our nerve if we had
talked longer. I'm glad he hurried. I threw myself on the bed and
cried. Then I remembered Mary, and was ashamed of myself.
Just for something to do I have tried to go back over the day and put it
down for you. People have come in. When they saw I was writing they went
away. Now Mother Christie arrives to tell me that I simply must come and
eat. They have managed to get a real meal together--the first in two
days. It is way after six o'clock.
_April eighteenth._
Herbert did not go to Mersina. He came back last night--or rather I
brought him back. At supper--a meal of sorrow--Daddy Christie received a
telegram. The lines are working. That has been a mystery these past few
days. They stopped the railway, but why didn't they cut the telegraph?
And, in the midst of killing and looting and burning, we have received
telegrams delivered coolly by an employé who stepped over the dead to
get to us. The telegram was from Adana, stating that the British cruiser
_Swiftsure_ had arrived at Mersina.
I felt like a condemned man reprieved at the gallows. But had Herbert
started? A little while before he had sent a soldier up from the station
with a message saying that he found his locomotive gone, and had been
trying to get another out from Mersina by using the railway's private
wire. He might still be there. He need not undertake the trip now.
Broken viaducts in the dark--rails torn up--Kurds wildly prancing around
and shooting from their horses. I said nothing to the others at the
table. I slipped quietly out of the room, hurried up to our apartment,
put on my riding-boots and Herbert's raincoat (I am glad I am pretty
tall--only the sleeves needed a tuck), and made my way to the gate. I
had the barn lantern we use in the stable. I did not want to risk
Socrates or any of the Armenian boys. They were still killing stray
ones--especially at night. The four soldiers left remonstrated. They
could not understand me any more than I could understand them. They
tried to bar the way. But they did not dare touch me. So they decided to
resign themselves to the inevitable. Two of them came along with me.
It was a weird mile with only the lantern to light us. One soldier went
in front, finding the path, and the other was beside me. From occasional
zigzags I suspected what we were avoiding. Mercifully I could not see.
Finally we reached the station. Herbert and his officer and the
telegraph operator were in the little ticket office. Herbert was at the
end of his patience--he just couldn't get up a locomotive. When he heard
my news, he was very happy. The Albanian officer was not. He was for the
adventure. Doubted if the news was true. Why hadn't the Mersina operator
mentioned it? Just then a message went through for Adana about a special
train for the British Government. The operator told us. We knew then
that it was true.
Back we went, all of us. I did not ask Herbert any more about his
interrupted story of the days in Adana. I did not want to hear. He did
not want to tell. We found a funny story that had been sent to us for
Christmas, and of which we had read only a few chapters. We reread
those--and the rest of the book, laughing ourselves to sleep to save our
sanity.
WHY?
_Tarsus, April twenty-second._
Dearest Mother:
I have been sewing and helping care for the wounded.
Mrs. Christie gave me the first Relief money that came, a Turkish
gold-piece, worth four dollars and forty cents. With it I bought a roll
of flannel. On Jeanne's balcony I fixed a hand-run sewing machine. There
I basked in the sunshine as I worked on baby night-gowns all day Sunday.
When I tell you that I made twelve nighties in a day you know the
machine did speed-work. Our caldrons are all in use heating water so
that mothers can wash their children and their children's clothes, and
take advantage of the sunshine to dry things. Every time I finish a
nightie, it means another baby can have a bath. We have contrived
sanitary arrangements, and small trenches have been dug for drainage.
Queer the Turks never thought of turning off our water. It could have
been done easily through the surface pipes.
Dr. Peeples of the Covenanter Mission was the first doctor to come
through. He got here before his supplies. I shall never forget his face
when I showed him my table with the Red Cross kit. He appropriated the
medicine-case and some bandages and marched off with them. Dr. Peeples
and I dressed wounds. But Mother Christie stopped that on account of "my
condition." Afterwards we compromised. I installed a table inside my
door and worked away preparing medicines and dressings. I handed these
out to the doctor on a tray, curving my wrist around the door-jamb and
so was spared the pain of seeing the patients. I do not take stock in
the popular notion that I might "mark the child." Only the pleasant
things that happen to me can touch that child.
The arrival of the British battleship _Swiftsure_ has saved Mersina.
Yesterday the commander went to Adana by special train. On his return he
stopped at Tarsus and invited Dr. Christie and Herbert to accompany him
to Mersina. They accepted with alacrity. Early this morning Herbert
boarded the _Swiftsure_ and had a chat with the captain. As a result,
the captain allowed six officers to come to Tarsus with Herbert by
special train to-day. We had them for lunch and took them all over the
city, showing them the work of the mob. When the refugee children saw
these officers arrive, the poor kiddies were terrified. Many ran and
hid, and the wee ones found their mothers as quickly as possible. The
officers' uniforms were the cause, according to the kiddies' own words.
How is that for proof that Turkish soldiery helped in the massacring!
We believe that one hundred were killed in Tarsus and four hundred in
villages nearby. Adana's murders are in the thousands. The killing of
Miner brings the tragedy right into our mission family. Mary is
supernaturally calm and brave. Not only does she do everything for her
baby, but she is in the midst of all the relief work.
While Herbert was in Mersina, Mrs. Dodds of the Covenanter Mission urged
him to take me there so as to get me away from the danger of contracting
some disease. She also urged that the discomfort of our now crowded
quarters at Tarsus was not good for me. We have nearly five thousand
refugees on the college grounds. If railroad communication is
reestablished before my baby comes, we are going to accept the
invitation of Mrs. Dodds. I do not know from day to day and cannot plan.
Mother, if I am not ready for the skeptics, and for those who smile and
jeer, yes, jeer is the word, at missionaries! The stick-in-the-muds who
thought we came all this long way because we wanted adventure must be
wagging their narrow little heads and wagering that we are getting more
than we bargained for. I am a great believer in letting every one have
his point of view. But generally one finds that the people who boast
that they are liberal and broad-minded are the most bigoted people on
earth. They assert their point of view, but are unwilling to admit
another's right to his. One does not have to believe in missions or want
to be a missionary. But one does not have to ridicule missionary effort
and missionaries, either. Among the missionaries here, women as well as
men, not a single one has shown the white feather. Quite the contrary, I
doubt if any other score of Americans in the United States would have
upheld better the glorious traditions of our race for coolness,
resourcefulness, and ability to grapple suddenly with a crisis. The
American women here are made of the same stuff as my several times
great-grandmother in Lebanon Valley, who carried the gun around the
room together with the broom as she did her sweeping.
I can never think of the Armenians without a stirring of the heart in
affection and admiration. How can Americans resist the call to help
people who have the courage to die for their faith? One has to be
brought to their level of suffering, to be put into the situation in
which they have lived during centuries of Turkish oppression, to
understand them. Mother, they are heroes--these Armenians, children and
grand-children of heroes. It is nothing spectacular that they have done,
except in periods of massacre like this. But all along _they have kept
the faith_, they have preserved their distinct nationality, when an easy
path lay before them, were they willing to turn from Christ to Mohammed.
I see now so vividly what they have been born to, what they grow up from
early childhood fearing. Is not the greatest heroism in the world the
silent endurance of oppression that cannot be remedied, the bending of
the neck to the yoke when there is no other way, the living along
normally under the shadow of a constant and justified fear of death and
worse?
What saved the Tarsians the other night? Any dread of international
complications? Any respect for our Government? What do the Kurds know
about us? Nothing. Last summer when we were camping far up in the Taurus
mountains above the timber-line, a fellow of the type who has been doing
the dirty work for the party in power at Stambul, came along to talk
with us. We had chopped down a scrub pine-tree to build a fire and were
sitting around the fire after supper. We were eating walnuts. I offered
him some. With them I gave salt. He took both walnuts and salt, touched
them to his forehead by way of thanks, and began to eat. Socrates
expressed satisfaction that the man had done this--said we could be
surer now that he would not turn fierce dogs loose the next day, when we
broke camp. In talking to the man, I asked him what he knew about my
country. He was a shepherd, and had never seen a town bigger than
Tarsus. He replied, "There are a great many Americans in America, at
least five thousand, all very rich and all very kind."
What saved the Tarsians? St. Paul's College. Those people have had the
vision held up before them, and some of its light must have got into
their dark hearts. I keep thinking of the way Jesus forgave people
because they just didn't know what they were doing. I do not believe for
a minute that it was the American flag that saved the Christian
population of this town. The Stars and Stripes mean nothing to them. It
is the way Daddy and Mother Christie have lived before these Turks all
these years that did it.
Listen to this, and you will see what I mean. Three hundred refugees owe
their lives directly to one act of thoughtful kindness. Sometime before
the massacre, Dr. Christie heard that the only son of a village Sheik
had died. He got on his horse and went straight out to comfort the old
father. The news came late in the day, so that Daddy Christie was
obliged to make the trip in the night. I have seen the Sheik several
times myself. He came one day and invited Herbert and me to go hunting
with him. He is a superb specimen. In the midst of the heat and hatred
of last Friday, the Sheik appeared with some three hundred Armenians.
The order to massacre had come, "and a massacre is good hunting, you
know," he blandly remarked. "As I was about to go forth, I reflected
that the people here were Dr. Christie's friends. Cannot see why you
like them," he added, "but seeing you do, here they are." The old man,
of course, is a Moslem. He told us he found some of those he brought in
hiding in the swamps, not far from his home, "lying in the water, with
just their noses sticking out to breathe," he laughingly explained.
ABDUL HAMID'S LAST DAY
_Mersina,
April twenty-fifth._
Mother dear: