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."