By Far Euphrates: A Tale

by Deborah Alcock

"Badvellie" means "full of honour"; and the Armenians usually speak of their priests and pastors by this respectful title.

"Stay, Kevork," said his mother. "You had better not take that tebish. Shushan is a child, and does not know the world. But do you think that it is possible the foreigners would allow the boys and the girls to speak to one another? They are very good people, else surely our cousins would not have let their own children, and Shushan, go to school to them."

This certainly was a difficulty, and even Shushan looked perplexed. But Kevork was equal to the occasion. "Yon Effendi tells me that the foreign Effendis, men and women, talk to each other just as much and as often as they like," he said. "Shushan, my sister, I will pray of the Effendi who teaches me to give thy token to the Effendi who teaches Oriort[2] Elmas Stepanian, and she will find some right way, I have no doubt, of giving it to her."

"Do so, Kevork, and I thank thee many times." She gave him the string of beads, and then her tongue waxed eloquent in praise of her friend. "She is so good, so clever," she said. "She knows, oh, so many things! She can speak and write English, not just a little as I do, but beautifully, like a real American! She knows grammar and geography, and the counting up of figures, and the story of the world. She does not want a thought-string like that to help her." (Both Turks and Armenians are accustomed, when thinking or talking, to finger strings of beads, called tebishes, and to obtain some mysterious assistance from the process.) "Oh! no. She would never use one at school, nor indeed would most of us. But now she is going where she will have such very hard lessons to learn, that perhaps she may be glad of it. At least it will remind her of her poor little Shushan. Tell her, Kevork, that Shushan puts a prayer for her on every bead she sends her."

"I think it is a very foolish plan to teach all those things to girls," one of the old women observed. "They will be fit for nothing else in the world but reading books, and who will mind the babies? And what will become of cooking and washing and baking bread, not to talk of spinning and sewing?"

"The girls of the American school at Urfa cook and bake and spin and sew right well for their years," Shushan spoke up bravely. "And those who go to Aintab, like Elmas, learn those things even better there. Oh, I wish you could see Elmas in her home, working to help her mother, and taking care of her little brothers and sister; you would know what she was worth then."

This did not fall upon unheeding ears. Young Kevork made a mental note of it; then turned quickly to ask his mother what she could manage to give him in the way of clothing, as his cousin wished to set out on his journey the morning of the day after next.

Meanwhile Jack was busily employed writing to his uncle, and to his uncle's son. The former he told, briefly enough, of his father's death, his own long illness, and the care and kindness of the people amongst whom he had fallen. He asked him to write to him, and to send him money for his journey home, and also to recompense those who had been so good to him. He knew, of course, that he would have a considerable income of his own, so he felt no difficulty in making this request. He concluded with love to his relatives and enquiries after their welfare. To his cousin he wrote more freely, and gave more particulars. But even to him his words did not flow easily. He could not take up his life in his hand, and look at it from the outside, so as to describe it to another. He could only give details of his surroundings, and of this he soon tired, being unaccustomed to write in English, or indeed to write at all. He broke off abruptly, folded up the two letters in one, sealed the packet, directed it to his uncle, and brought it to Thomassian.

Baron Muggurditch Thomassian was emphatically the courteous, cultured, cosmopolitan Armenian. He had amassed a considerable fortune in his business, which was that of a merchant of drugs; and to which he joined some cautious and lucrative money-lending. Moreover, he had travelled far, and seen much. He could speak several languages quite well enough to make shrewd bargains in them; and he knew the art of spending as well as of making money. He could appreciate music, poetry, and painting, no less than luxuries of a more material kind. Yet Jack felt as if he could never love him, never trust him even, as he did his friends in Biridjik. "I don't know what it is," he said to himself; "for there is nothing amiss with his looks, except perhaps something a little shifty about his eyes."