The Eye of Zeitoon Part 12

Music is the sure key to the gipsy heart, and Fred unlocked it. The men and women, and the little sleepy children on the long wooden platform opposite began to sway and swing in rhythm. Fred divined what was coming, and played louder, wilder, lawlessly. And Maga did an astonis.h.i.+ng thing. She sat down on the floor and pulled her shoes and stockings off, as unselfconsciously as if she were alone.

Then Fred began the tune again from the beginning, and he had it at his finger-ends by then. He made the rafters ring. And without a word Maga kicked the shoes and stockings into a corner, flung her outer, woolen upper-garment after them, and began to dance.

There is a time when any of us does his best. Money-marriage-praise-applause (which is totally another thing than praise, and more like whisky in its workings)-ambition-prayer-there is a key to the heart of each of us that can unlock the flood-tides of emotion and carry us nolens volens to the peaks of possibility. Either Will, or else Fred's music, or the setting, or all three unlocked her gifts that night. She danced like a moth in a flame-a wandering woman in the fire unquenchable that burns convention out of gipsy hearts, and makes the patteran-the trail-the only way worth while.

Opposite, the gipsies sprawled in silence on their platform, breathing a little deeper when deepest approval stirred them, a little more quickly when her Muse took hold of Maga and thrilled her to expression of the thoughts unknown to people of the dinning walls and streets.

We four leaned back against our wall in a sort of silent revelry, Fred alone moving, making his beloved instrument charm wisely, calling to her just enough to keep a link, as it were, through which her imagery might appeal to ours. Some sort of mental bridge between her tameless paganism and our twentieth-century twilight there had to be, or we never could have sensed her meaning. The concertina's wailings, mid-way between her intelligence and ours, served well enough.

My own chief feeling was of exultation, crowing over the hooded city-folk, who think that drama and the tricks of colored light and shade have led them to a glimpse of the hem of the garment of Unrest-a cheap mean feeling, of which I was afterward ashamed.

Maga was not crowing over anybody. Neither did she only dance of things her senses knew. The history of a people seized her for a reed, and wrote itself in figures past imagining between the crimson firelight; and the shadows of the cattle stalls.

Her dance that night could never have been done with leather between bare foot and earth. It told of measureless winds and waters-of the distances, the stars, the day, the night-rain sweeping down-dew dropping gently-the hundred kinds of birds-the thousand animals and creeping things-and of man, who is lord of all of them, and woman, who is lord of man-man setting naked foot on naked earth and glorying with the thrill of life, new, good, and wonderful.

One of the Turk's seven sons produced a saz toward the end-a little Turkish drum, and accompanied with swift, staccato stabs of sound that spurred her like the goads of overtaking time toward the peak of full expression-faster and faster-wilder and wilder-freer and freer of all limits, until suddenly she left the thing unfinished, and the drum-taps died away alone.

That was art-plain art. No human woman could have finished it. It was innate abhorrence of the anticlimax that sent her, having looked into the eyes of the unattainable, to lie sobbing for short breath in her corner in the dark, leaving us to imagine the ending if we could.

And instead of anticlimax second climax came. Almost before the echoes of the drum-taps died among the dancing shadows overhead a voice cried from the roof in Armenian, and Kagig rose to his feet.

"Let us climb to the roof and see, effendim," he said, pulling on his tattered goat-skin coat.

"See what, Ermenie?" demanded Rustum Khan. The Rajput's eyes were still ablaze with pagan flame, from watching Maga.

"To see whether thou hast manhood behind that swagger!" answered Kagig, and led the way. No man ever yet explained the racial aversions.

"Kopek!-dog, thou!" growled the Rajput, but Kagig took no notice and led on, followed by Monty and the rest of us. Maga and the gipsies came last, swarming behind us up the ladder through a hole among the beams, and clambering on to the roof over boxes piled in the draughty attic. Up under the stars a man was standing with an arm stretched out toward Tarsus.

"Look!" he said simply.

To the westward was a crimson glow that mushroomed angrily against the sky, throbbing and swelling with hot life like the vomit of a crater. We watched in silence for three minutes, until one of the gipsy women began to moan.

"What do you suppose it is?" I asked then.

"I know what it is," said Kagig simply.

"Tell then."

"'Effendi, that is the heart of Armenia burning. Those are the homes of my nation-of my kin!"

"And good G.o.d, where d'you suppose Miss Vanderman is?" Fred exclaimed.

Will was standing beside Maga, looking into her eyes as if he hoped to read in them the riddle of Armenia.

Chapter Six "Pa.s.sing the buck to Allah!"

LAUS LACHRIMABILIS

So now the awaited ripe reward- Your cactus crown! Since I have urged "Get ready for the untoward"

Ye bid me reap the wrath I dirged; And I must show the darkened way, Who beckoned vainly in the light!

I'll lead. But salt of Dead Sea spray Were sweeter on my lips to-night!

Oh, days of aching sinews, when I trod the choking dust With feet afire that could not tire, atremble with the trust More mighty in my inner man than fear of men without, The word I heard on Kara Dagh and did not dare to doubt- Timely warning, clear to me as starlight after rain When, sleepless on eternal hills, I saw the purpose plain And left, swift-foot at dawn, obedient, to break The news ye said was no avail-advice ye would not take!

Oh,-nights of tireless talking by the hearth of hidden fires- On roofs, behind the trade-bales-among oxen in the byres- Out in rain between the G.o.downs, where the splas.h.i.+ng puddles warn Of tiptoeing informers; when I faced the freezing dawn With set price on my head, but still the set resolve untamed, Not melted by the mockery, by no suspicion shamed, To hide by day in holes, abiding dark and wind and rain That loosed me straining to the task ye ridiculed again!

Oh, weeks of empty waiting, while the enemy designed In detail how to loot the stuff ye would not leave behind!

Worse weeks of empty agony when, helpless and alone, I watched in hiding for the crops from that seed I had sown; For dust-clouds that should prove at last Armenia awake- A nation up and coming! I had labored for your sake, I had hungered, I had suffered. Ye had well rewarded then If ye had come, and hanged me just to prove that ye were men!

But all the pride was promises, the criticism jeers; Ye had no heart for sacrifice, and I no time for tears.

I offered-nay, I gave! I squandered body and breath and soul, I bared the need, I showed the way, I preached a goodly goal, I urged you choose a leader, since your faith in me was dim, I swore to serve the chief ye chose, and teach my lore to him, So he should reap where I had sown. And yet ye bade me wait- And waited till, awake at last, ye bid me lead too late!

And so, in place of ripe reward, Your cactus crown! And I, who urged "Get ready for the untoward"

Must drink the dregs of wrath I dirged!

Ye bid me set time's finger back!

And stage anew the opened fight!

I'll lead. But slime of Dead Sea wrack Were sweeter on my lips this night!

The first thought that occurred to each of us four was that Kagig had probably lied, or that he had merely voiced his private opinion, based on expectation. The glare in the distance seemed too big and solid to be caused by burning houses, even supposing a whole village were in flames. Yet there was not any other explanation we could offer. A distant cloud of black smoke with bulging red under-belly rolled away through the darkness like a tremendous mountain range.

We stood in silence trying to judge how far away the thing might be, Kagig standing alone with his foot on the parapet, his goat-skin coat hanging like a hussar's dolman, and Monty pacing up and down along the roof behind us all. The gipsies seemed able to converse by nods and nudges, with now and then one word whispered. After a little while Maga whispered in Will's ear, and he went below with her. All the gipsies promptly followed. Otherwise in the darkness we might not have noticed where Will went.

"That proves she is no gipsy!" vowed Rustum Khan, standing between Fred and me. "They, would have trusted one of their own kind."

"They call her Maga Jhaere," said I. "The attaman's name is Jhaere.

Don't you suppose he's her father?"

"If he were her father he would have no fear," the Rajput answered. "All gipsies are alike. Their women will dance the nautch, and promise unchast.i.ty as if that were a little matter. But when it comes to performance of promises the gitana* is true to the Rom.** It is because she is no gipsy that they follow her now to watch. And it is because men say that Americans are Mormons and polygamous, and very swift in the use of revolvers, that all follow instead of one or two!"

------- * Gitana, gipsy young woman. ** Rom-Gipsy husband, or family man. -------

"Go down then, and make sure they don't murder him!" commanded Monty, and Rustum Khan turned to obey with rather ill grace. He contrived to convey by his manner that he would do anything for Monty, even to the extent of saving the life of a man he disliked. At the moment when he turned there came the sound of a troop of horses galloping toward us.

"I will first see who comes," he said.

"The blood of Yerkes sahib on your head, Rustum Khan!" Monty answered.

At that he went below.

But neither were we destined to remain up there very long. We heard colossal thumping in the kahveh beneath us and presently the Rajput's head reappeared through the opening in the roof.

"The fools are barricading the door," he shouted. "They make sure that an enemy outside could burn us inside without hindrance!"

At that Kagig came along the roof to our corner and looked into Monty's eyes. Fred and I stood between the two of them and the parapet, because for the first few seconds we were not sure the Armenian did not mean murder. His eyes glittered, and his teeth gleamed. It was not possible to guess whether or not the hand under his goat-skin coat clutched a weapon.

"It is now that you Eenglis sportmen shall endure a test!" he remarked.

Exactly as in the Yeni Khan in Tarsus when we first met him there was a moment now of intense repulsion, entirely unaccountable, succeeded instantly by a wave of sympathy. I laughed aloud, remembering how strange dogs meeting in the street to smell each other are swept by unexplainable antipathies and equally swift comrades.h.i.+p. He thought I laughed at him.

"Neye geldin?" he growled in Turkish. "Wherefore didst thou come? To cackle like a barren hen that sees another laying? Nichevo," he added, turning his back on me. And that was insolence in Russian, meaning that n.o.body and nothing could possibly be of less importance. He seemed to keep a separate language for each set of thoughts. "Let us go below. Let us stop these fools from making too much trouble," he added in English. "One man ought to stay on the roof. One ought to be sufficient."

Since he had said I did not matter, I remained, and it was therefore I who shouted down a challenge presently in round English at a party who clattered to the door on blown horses, and thundered on it as if they had been shatirs* hurrying to herald the arrival of the sultan himself. There was nothing furtive about their address to the decrepit door, nor anything meek. Accordingly I couched the challenge in terms of unmistakable affront, repeating it at intervals until the leader of the new arrivals chose to identify himself.

--------- * Shatir, the man who runs before a personage's horse. ---------

"I am Hans von Quedlinburg!" he shouted. But I did not remember the name.

"Only a thief would come riding in such a hurry through the night!" said I. "Who is with you?"