Our year is finished. We meant to go early in June, anyway. It is a good thing I am feeling so well, and got my strength back so quickly. The heat is coming on, and we fear quarantine at Beirut and Port Said, if an epidemic breaks out here. This is an urgent reason for our going immediately. Herbert turned over night from a college professor to a newspaper man. He has managed to send dispatches by little boats to Cyprus and they have gone uncensored to Paris. But now he has done all that needs to be done here in the way of getting news out. Much good has been accomplished by publicity. If you didn't have me here to think about when you opened your newspaper at the breakfast table, you would just read headlines, and say, "the Armenians are in trouble again." By "you" I mean the average person at home. Now what Herbert and I must do is to tell our story and give our testimony as convincingly as we can, and then put it where the most people can see it. We detest the advertisement from a personal standpoint, but cannot consider that now.
S.S. "Assouan"
Off the Cilician Coast,
Friday night,
May twenty-seventh.
It wasn't a Russian steamer after all, but an old tub of a Khedivial. It is a palace to us, however, and the British flag looks good to Americans.
The last thing that happened to us in Turkey was to have Scrappie christened. Dr. Christie and Mother Christie came down to say good-by, and Socrates with them. The new American Consul had just arrived from Patras. (He turned out to be a college classmate of Herbert's!) A christening party was improvised for our farewell. So Scrappie got her name, Christine Este, and the Consul gave a combination birth and baptismal certificate, with the Eagle stamped upon it. I wore my blue dimity dress. Herbert put a big rocking-chair behind me, so that I could flop down in it the first minute I felt tired. Scrappie wore the prettiest of her long dresses, and under her chin was tucked an Indian embroidered handkerchief that Mrs. Doughty-Wylie had long ago given me against the christening day.
It was an odd gathering, missionaries, English and American naval officers, sailors from the warships, Armenian friends, some of our boys, including Socrates, and others I did not know who came to help eat the cake and drink the sherbet. In the Orient, one's door is open to all the world at a feast. I got nervous only when they wanted to kiss the baby. Scrappie howled, and I was glad of the excuse to withdraw her.
When I went downstairs to the carriage, one of the officers of the North Carolina carried my bag, and drove me to the scala. Mother Christie held Scrappie. The North Carolina's launch was waiting. Out we went to the great ship, where I was to spend the afternoon. The Christies and others were coming later to say good-by. Herbert was to spend the afternoon rounding up the baggage with the help of Socrates, and row it out to the Assouan. A London war correspondent had just arrived, too—the first of the newspaper men—and Herbert had to pilot him around.
The sky-line of Mersina, broken by the minarets, gleamed white in the sunshine. I did not dare to think too hard about what I was leaving. My mind flew back to the day I left Tarsus, how the Armenian women pressed my hands, touched my dress as I passed, and made me promise to come back. I cheered up by looking at the American flag waving from the stern of the launch. Only a year ago, and that was the natural sight. I did not know that Tarsus and Mersina existed. Turkey was something I thought would forever be vague. And now—it has become a part of my life. All right to talk about banishing memories. But could we? The sunshine of the East they say casts its spell forever over those who have lived in it. Would we ever come back?
We steamed for a mile straight out to sea. The officers told me I was in command, and jollied along as if I were not a matron with a baby. One ensign, a Southerner, of course, called me "Miss" with that inimitable drawl. He was just the kind who would have made it "sweetheart" in an hour. I felt a bit shaky when the launch drew up beside the gleaming white cruiser. As we reached the ladder and then fell away, I imagined my baby falling into the water. First touch of maternal worry, which I suppose I shall now have for the rest of my life. The lieutenant-commander took the baby. Two ensigns carried me up. Once on that ship I was at home.
The captain was waiting to greet the youngest girl who had ever been entertained on the North Carolina. Scrappie was fixed up in an officer's bunk, where I knew she would sleep just as placidly as ashore until it was time for her next meal. I was invited into the wardroom. A leather arm-chair and—I ought to write a cup of tea, but it wasn't—awaited me. The officers, of course, knew lots of my friends. My mind went waltzing back to dancing days in the Armory and to my birthday dinners at the old Bellevue after Army-Navy games. I was living in the anti-Herbert period, when parsons and missionaries and Turkey and babies did not claim me.
There was a soft knock at the steel door that stood ajar. A big negro put in his head, and announced: "Missus, dat chile am cryin'."