V
The destiny of some men lies coiled within them, invisible as the blood of their hearts or the stuff of their will, working darkly, day by day and year after year, for their glory or for their destruction. The destiny of other men is an accident, a god from the machine or an enemy in ambush. Such was the destiny of Guy Matthews, as it was of how many other unsuspecting young men of his time. It would have been inconceivable to him, as he stood in his dark stone room listening to Magin's receding stamp, that anything could make him do what Magin demanded. Yet something did it—the last drop of the strange essence Dizful had been brewing for him.
The letter that accomplished this miracle came to him by the hand of a Bakhtiari from Meidan-i-Naft. It said very little. It said so little, and that little so briefly, that Matthews, still preoccupied with his own quarrel, at first saw no reason why a stupid war on the Continent, and the consequent impossibility of telegraphing home except by way of India, should affect the oil-works, or why his friends should put him in the position of showing Magin the white feather. But as he turned over the Bakhtiari's scrap of paper the meaning of it grew, in the light of the very circumstances that made him hesitate, so portentously that he sent Abbas for horses. And before the Ramazan gun boomed again he was well on his way back to Meidan-i-Naft.
There was something unreal to him about that night ride eastward across the dusty moonlit plain. He never forgot that night. The unexpectedness of it was only a part of the unreality. What pulled him up short was a new quality in the general unexpectedness of life. Life had always been, like the trip from which he was returning, more or less of a lark. Whereas it suddenly appeared that life might, perhaps, be very little of a lark. So far as he had ever pictured life to himself he had seen it as an extension of his ordered English countryside, beset by no hazard more searching than a hawthorne hedge. But the plain across which he rode gave him a new picture of it, lighted romantically enough by the moon, yet offering a rider magnificent chances to break his neck in some invisible nullah, if not to be waylaid by marauding Lurs or lions. It even began to come to this not too articulate young man that romance and reality might be the same thing, romance being what happens to the other fellow and reality being what happens to you. He looked up at the moon of war that had been heralded to him by cannon and tried to imagine what, under that same moon far away in Europe, was happening to the other fellow. For it was entirely on the cards that it might also happen to him, Guy Matthews, who had gone up the Ab-i-Diz for a lark! That his experience had an extraordinary air of having happened to some one else, as he went back in his mind to his cruise on the river, his meeting with the barge, his first glimpse of Dizful, the interlude of Bala Bala, the return to Dizful, the cannon, Magin. Magin! He was extraordinary enough, in all conscience, as Matthews tried to piece together, under his romantic-realistic moon, the various unrelated fragments his memory produced of that individual, connoisseur of Greek kylixes and Lur nose-jewels, quoter of Scripture and secret agent.
The bounder must have known, as he sat smoking his cigar and ironizing on the ruins of empires, that the safe and settled little world to which they both belonged was already in a blaze. Of course he had known it—and he had said nothing about it! But not least extraordinary was the way the bounder, whom after all Matthews had only seen twice, seemed to color the whole adventure. In fact, he had been the first speck in the blue, the forerunner—if Matthews had only seen it—of the more epic adventure into which he was so quickly to be caught.
At Shuster he broke his journey. There were still thirty miles to do, and fresh horses were to be hired—of some fasting charvadar who would never consent in Ramazan, Matthews very well knew, to start for Meidan-i-Naft under the terrific August sun. But he was not ungrateful for a chance to rest. He discovered in himself, too, a sudden interest in all the trickle of the telegraph. And he was anxious to pick up what news he could from the few Europeans in the town. Moreover, he needed to see Ganz about the replenishing of his money-bag; for not the lightest item of the traveler's pack in Persia is his load of silver krans.
At the telegraph office Matthews ran into Ganz himself. The Swiss was a short, fair, faded man, not too neat about his white clothes, with a pensive mustache and an ambiguous blue eye that lighted at sight of the young Englishman. The light, however, was not one to illuminate Matthews' darkness in the matter of news. What news trickled out of the local wire was very meager indeed. The Austrians were shelling Belgrade, the Germans, the Russians, and the French had gone in. That was all. No, not quite all; for the bank-rate in England had suddenly jumped sky-high—higher, at any rate, than it had ever jumped before. And even Shuster felt the distant commotion, in that the bazaar had already seen fit to put up the price of sugar and petroleum. Not that Shuster showed any outward sign of commotion as the two threaded their way toward Ganz's house. The deserted streets reminded Matthews strangely of Dizful. What was stranger was to find how they reminded him of a chapter that is closed. He hardly noticed the blank walls, the archways of brick and tile, the tall badgirs, even the filth and smells. But strangest was it to listen to the hot silence, to look up at the brilliant stripe of blue between the adobe walls, while over there—!
The portentous uncertainty of what might be over there made his answers to Ganz's questions about his journey curt and abstracted. He gave no explanation of his failure to see the celebration at Bala Bala and the ruins of Susa, which Ganz supposed to be the chief objects of his excursion. Yet he found himself looking with a new eye at the anomalous exile whom the Father of Swords called the prince among the merchants of Shuster, noting the faded untidy air as he had never noted it before, wondering why a man should bury himself in such a hole as this. Was one now, he speculated, to look at everybody all over again? He was not the kind of man, Ganz, to interest the Guy Matthews who had gone to Dizful. But it was the Guy Matthews who came back from Dizful who didn't like Ganz's name or Ganz's good enough accent. Nevertheless he yielded to Ganz's insistence, when they reached the office and the money-bag had been restored to its normal portliness, that the traveler should step into the house to rest and cool off.
"Do come!" urged the Swiss. "I so seldom see a civilized being. And I have a new piano!" he threw in as an added inducement. "Do you play?"
He had no parlor tricks, he told Ganz, and he told himself that he wanted to get on. But Ganz had been very decent to him, after all. And he began to perceive that he himself was extremely tired. So he followed Ganz through the cloister of the pool to the court where the great basin glittered in the sun, below the pillared portico.
"Who is that?" exclaimed Ganz suddenly. "What a tone, eh? And what a touch!"
Matthews heard from Ganz's private quarters a welling of music so different from the pipes and cow-horns of Dizful that it gave him a sudden stab of homesickness.
"I say," he said, brightening, "could it be any of the fellows from Meidan-i-Naft?"
The ambiguous blue eye brightened too.
"Perhaps! It is the river music from Rheingold. But listen," Ganz added with a smile. "There are sharks among the Rhine maidens!"
They went on, up the steps of the portico, to the door which Ganz opened softly, stepping aside for his visitor to pass in. The room was so dark, after the blinding light of the court, that Matthews saw nothing at first. He stepped forward eagerly, feeling his way among Ganz's tables and chairs toward the end of the room from which the music came. They gave him, the cluttering tables and chairs, after the empty rooms he had been living in, a sharper renewal of his stab. And even a piano—! It made him think of Kipling and the Song of the Banjo:
"I am memory and torment—I am Town!
I am all that ever went with evening dress!"
But what mute inglorious Paderewski of the restricted circle he had moved in for the past months was capable of such parlor tricks as this? Then, suddenly, he saw. He saw, swaying back and forth against the dark background of the piano, a domed shaven head that made him stop short—that head full of so many astounding things! He saw, traveling swiftly up and down the keys, rising above them to an extravagant height and pouncing down upon them again, those predatory hands that had pounced on the spoils of Susa! They began, in a moment, to flutter lightly over the upper end of the keyboard. It was extraordinary what a ripple poured as if out of those hands. Magin himself bent over to listen to the ripple, partly showing his face as he turned his ear to the keys. He showed, too, in the lessening gloom, a smile Matthews had never seen before, more extraordinary than anything. Yet even as Matthews watched it, in his stupefaction, the smile changed, broadened, hardened. And Magin, sitting up straight again with his back to the room, began to execute a series of crashing chords.
After several minutes he stopped and swung around on the piano-stool. Ganz clapped his hands, shouting "Bis! Bis!" At that Magin rose, bowed elaborately, and kissed his hands right and left. He ended by pulling up a table-cover near him, gazing intently under the table.
"Have you lost something?" inquired Ganz.
"I seem," answered Magin, "to have lost half my audience. What has become of our elusive English friend? Am I so unfortunate as to have been unable to satisfy his refined ear? Or can it be that his emotions were too much for him?"
"He was in a hurry," explained Ganz. "He is just back from Dizful, you know."
"Ah?" uttered Magin. "He is a very curious young man. He is always in a hurry. He was in a hurry the first time I had the pleasure of meeting him. He was in such a hurry at Bala Bala that he didn't wait to see the celebration which you told me he went to see. He also left Dizful in a surprising hurry, from what I hear. I happen to know that the telegraph had nothing to do with it. I can only conclude that some one frightened him away. Where do you suppose he hurries to? And do you think he will arrive in time?"
Ganz opened his mouth; but if he intended to say something, he decided instead to draw his hand across his spare jaw. However, he did speak after all.
"I notice that you at least do not hurry, Majesty! Do you fiddle while Rome burns?"
"Ha!" laughed Magin. "It is not Rome that burns! And I notice, Mr. Ganz, that you seem to be of a forgetful as well as of an inquiring disposition. I would have been in Mohamera long ago if it had not been for your son of Papa, with his interest in unspoiled towns. I will thank you to issue no more letters to the Father of Swords without remembering me. Do you wish to enrich the already overstocked British Museum at my expense? But I do not mind revealing to you that I am now really on my way to Mohamera."
"H'm," let out Ganz slowly. "My dear fellow, haven't you heard that there is a war in Europe?"
"I must confess, my good Ganz, that I have. But what has Europe to do with Mohamera?"
"God knows," said Ganz. "I should think, however, since you are so far from the Gulf, that you would prefer the route of Baghdad—now that French and Russian cruisers are seeking whom they may devour."
"You forget, Mr. Ganz, that I am so fortunate as to possess a number of valuable objects of virtue. I would think twice before attempting to carry those objects of virtue through the country of our excellent friends the Beni Lam Arabs!"
Ganz laughed.
"Your objects of virtue could very well be left with me. What if the English should go into the war?"
"The English? Go into the war? Never fear! This is not their affair. And if it were, what could they do? Sail their famous ships up the Rhine and the Elbe? Besides, that treacherous memory of yours seems to fail you again. This is Persia, not England."
"Perhaps," answered Ganz. "But the English are very funny people. There is a rumor, you know, of pourparlers. What if you were to sail down to the gulf and some little midshipman were to fire a shot across your bow?"
"Ah, bah! I am a neutral! And Britannia is a fat old woman! Also a rich one, who doesn't put her hand into her pocket to please her neighbors. Besides, I have a little affair with the Sheikh of Mohamera—objects of virtue, indigo, who knows what? As you know, I am a versatile man." And swinging around on his stool, Magin began to play again.
"But even fat old women sometimes know how to bite," objected Ganz.
"Not when their teeth have dropped out," Magin threw over his shoulder—"or when strong young men plug their jaws!"