By Far Euphrates: A Tale - Deborah Alcock

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      "Hot!" said Jack. "No; I am shivering with cold. I can't keep still."

      The dose was administered; and Jack, following his father's movements with his eyes, noticed that he took one himself also.

      "Now, my boy," he said, "you have not slept for nearly four and twenty hours, and you spent all last night in the saddle. Unless you take a good rest, you may be ill. Lie as quiet as you can, and try to sleep."

      "I will, father; but—I'm so thirsty!"

      His father gave him some sherbet, and covered him up comfortably with a silk rug. Then he sat down, and took out his note-book and pencil; but he wrote only a few words in a faint, irregular hand, difficult to decipher: "Have heard from Jacob, my Syrian, that the plain we have just traversed is noted for its deadly malaria—is, in fact, a perfect hotbed of fever. I fear John has it."

      After some time Jack dropped off into a troubled doze. Strange dreams came to him, ending usually in some catastrophe that made him start up in sudden fright. Once he thought he was walking by the river, and somehow lost his footing and fell in. He woke up with a cry, "The water is so cold—so dark!" His father was at his side and soothed him.

      "Don't you remember," he said, "the dark river turns to light?"

      But as soon as the boy was quiet and at rest again, John Grayson added one more to the records in his note-book, and it was almost illegible: "We have both caught the fever. God help us! If I can, I will arrange——"

       Table of Contents

      "Among new men, strange faces, other minds."

       —Tennyson.

      After that, for young John Grayson, life was a blank. Dim shadows came and went like reflections in a mirror, having no continuity and leaving no impression. In a passing way, as a dumb creature might, he felt burning heat and freezing cold, pain and weariness, and nameless, indescribable distress. So too he saw forms around him—kind, dark-complexioned people, who gave him things to drink, and spoke to him in words he could not understand. Sometimes he was conscious of a sort of dull relief, or pleasure, when they cooled his burning brow with snow, which had been brought from the mountains packed in straw, and carefully preserved. But throughout all he missed something—some one. At first he knew that he wanted his father, and used to call for him piteously. But this passed at length; he grew too weak even for the pain of longing. With the very ill, as with the very old, "desire fails."

      Yet, in spite of all, he crept slowly back to life. One day he felt himself carried somewhere, and then became suddenly conscious of a delicious coolness after what seemed a lifetime of burning heat. Looking up presently, when the sense of fatigue had somewhat passed, he saw that he was lying on a large bedstead, like one of our old "four-posters," in the open air. There were white curtains all around him, which were being softly stirred by a refreshing breeze; while over his head—no roof between, not even the canvas of a tent—glowed the deep, rich blue of the Eastern sky. He was on the house-top.

      For a while after that he recovered more quickly. But the hot weather, coming early that year, brought on a sore relapse, and again for many days his life was despaired of. More than once the watchers thought he was actually gone, and often they thought the question was one of hours. Yet in the end the long conflict of death and life ended in the victory—the slow, uncertain victory—of the latter.

      He came back to life like a little child only just beginning it. For the time, his past was completely blotted out. Too weak in mind and body for connected thought, he accepted the things about him without question. He seemed to have been always there, amongst those dark-eyed people, who sat upon the ground, ate rice and bulghour, and wore striped "zebouns" of cotton cloth, and many-coloured jackets. He picked up their speech very quickly, as a child picks up his mother tongue; and at this stage did not remember his own. He came to know those about him, and to call them by their names. Between twenty and thirty persons dwelt in the large house in which he was a guest. But they were all one family—the sons and sons-in-law, the daughters and daughters-in-law, and a whole tribe of the grandchildren of a grey-haired patriarch called Hohannes Meneshian. The whole household were Jack's familiar friends. But he loved best the three boys who had been his first acquaintances, and their mother Mariam Hanum, who throughout his illness had been his devoted nurse. He liked the gentle touch of her hand, and the tenderness in her eyes as she looked at him. Sometimes he called her Mya—"Mother," as the boys did.

      Of the three—Kevork, Gabriel, and little Hagop—Gabriel was his favourite. Indeed the child was like his shadow, waiting on him continually, and often bringing him beautiful flowers—gorgeous pomegranate blossoms, or roses of many kinds and of most exquisite perfume. Or he would bring him fruit—delicious grapes, pears, plums, and peaches. Or sometimes he would just steal silently up to kiss his hand, and touch it with his forehead, or stand or sit quietly beside him.

      There was one thing that soothed him inexpressibly; though, like all else, it was accepted without question or comprehension. When Mariam and the other women went about the household tasks that, as he grew better, he liked to watch, they would say, "Hesoos ockna menk"—"Jesus, help us." When they finished, they would say, "Park Derocha"—"Praise the Lord." In everything there was devout acknowledgment of God; and the sweetest of all names that are named in heaven or upon earth was often on their lips, spoken with reverence and love. Something that for John Grayson still lived on,

      "In the purple twilight under the sea"

      of conscious thought, made this very grateful to him, and joined it with what were like the first heavenward thoughts and prayers of a little child.

      So time passed on. But, as he grew stronger, there awoke again within him a vague sense of want and longing. He had no power to express his feelings, but he felt something was wrong with him—he was not in his proper place. Or was it, rather, that there was something wrong with all the people about him? They were very kind; but they and their ways had a queer, distorted, unnatural look in his eyes, like the things one sees reflected in the bowl of a spoon. He longed continually, longed inexpressibly, for something he could not get, for some one who was not there; yet he could not tell who it was he wanted.

      He grew silent and melancholy, and his friends thought him in danger of another relapse, which would certainly have been fatal. Happily, it was now autumn again, the sultriest months of the year being over. So one day they wrapped him up carefully, seated him comfortably on cushions upon a donkey, and brought him with them, to a vineyard which Hohannes possessed on a slope of one of the hills above Biridjik. He was a man of some property, having flocks and herds also. The great, luscious grapes, "as large as plums," purple, green, and amber, hung in ripe profusion, nearly breaking down the low bushes they grew upon. Jack ate of them to his heart's content, and lay in the pleasant shade of a fig-tree, watching the other young people as they gathered them for their various uses. Tents had been brought, and it gave him a kind of dreamy satisfaction to sleep in one of these; it seemed somehow to bring him nearer to the things he had lost, and was vaguely feeling after. Often hints of them seemed to flash on him unbidden, but when he tried to grasp them vanished as they came, leaving him confused and faint, with a fluttering heart and an aching head.

      However, his strength improved in the cooler air and amidst the new surroundings. He had soon an opportunity of testing it. One day he happened to be by himself, resting under his favourite fig-tree, when he heard a noise as of something trampling and tearing the vines. Looking up, he saw that a flock of goats had got in among them, and were doing terrible damage, not only to the ripe fruit but even to the trees. He got up and called for help, but no one heeded, and he supposed no one heard. It was dreadful to see all this harm done; in fact, he could not endure it. Taking heart, he went to the rescue himself, or rather, for the first time since his illness, he ran. His steps were unsteady, his limbs shook under him; once indeed he fell, but he was up and on again in a moment. The exercise seemed to give back strength to his muscles and vigour to his brain. He shouted

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