I have had other visitors in this first week. Most welcome was the chaplain of the British cruiser Swiftsure, of whom we had seen something before Scrappie arrived. (Note how I date everything by Scrappie?) Scrappie was about fifty hours old when he turned up with a bottle of old brandy under his arm. I was glad to have his call—and the bottle—just as Herbert was going off once more. And with my door open—it could not be shut all the time—I could hear those dreadful telegrams being read that kept coming from Kessab, Dortyol, Hadjin and other towns of our vilayet and of Northern Syria. Everywhere it was the same story.
Yesterday a second American battle cruiser arrived. It was the Montana. The North Carolina came in several days ago. The first officer to land from the Montana was Lieutenant-Commander Beach. When he came to the Mission to call, I asked Miss Talbot to bring him in. He stayed some time, and would have cheered me up a lot had he not mentioned that Lili Neumann was dead. He did not know, of course, what Lili was to me, and I managed to say nothing. Under other circumstances it would have been a bad shock, but just now nothing seems to go too deep. However, my face must have told him I was suffering, for he looked down so kindly, and asked if there was anything I wanted. "Because, by Jove! you can have the ship," he declared. I told him I hadn't seen ice for ten months. "Just the thing," he exclaimed. A few hours later, sailors brought a huge rectangle of the most delicious thing in the world. There was also a bottle of Bols curaçao, and a sweet note. People are good.
Mr. Dodds and Mr. Wilson and Herbert got to work on the ice with hatchets. Mrs. Dodds made ice-cream last night and again for lunch to-day.
I must stop this letter, which has been written largely on the inspiration of that ice-cream. Miss Talbot has scolded me twice, and she hasn't seen other times that I got the paper and pencil under the mattress too soon for her.
I cannot leave it, though, without telling you of another invaluable helper. The very day of Scrappie's arrival, a wee, sawed-off Armenian woman came in. I heard somebody say "Sh," but she started in her toothless Jabberwocky. Miss Talbot tried the effect of cool, insistent English, but she couldn't put Dudu Hanum out. For Dudu Hanum squatted down on the floor, and I snickered. Miss T. thought I was asleep. She went to get Mrs. Dodds to interpret. In the meantime, Dudu Hanum addressed me. She rolled up her sleeves and held her arms out and then up over her head the way you do when you want to stop hiccoughs. All the while she talked volubly. It wasn't Turkish. I had learned some of that. As it didn't sound like a gang of wreckers pulling down a house, it wasn't Arabic. Must be Armenian. I recognized Dudu Hanum as the sister of the agent who gets our things out of the custom-house. Finally we learned what it was all about. Dudu Hanum was saying: "I have no gift to give you, but I have these two hands. Let me do your washing. I shall wash all your things and all of the baby's." The blessed old thing comes early every morning. What garments Mrs. Dodds allows to escape from her own capable hands, Dudu Hanum washes, and hangs them to dry upon the sun-baked roof.
FOOTNOTE:
[6] A year later I told this story in a Berlin salon. One of the guests at tea, Countess ——, exclaimed, "Why that boy was my son. He wrote me about it at the time."