533
T h e - K i n g ' s
B u s i n e s s
November 1929
sage up to that day. The general’s wife did not know Him. She employed for us many instructors. French— we know it, English too, as you see, and music. But nothing for the soul. Nothing to quiet our hearts that were heavy for longing. We Lesghi love our people. We had seen, Djemileh and I, all our friends, all our cousins—even bur own parents, killed. The Russian butchers do not spare! You see the picture? I had lain for hours afterwards and cried on my father’s cold heart —the picture would not leave me. I saw it night and dav. God alone knows how fierce the hate that burns in and in, because of man’s inhumanity to man. That hate burned here. I hated all Russians—even the general and his wife. Only God Himself who went down into death on the cross could fathom the depths of such a soul as mine, or could take the little monster that I had become and lay him on His shoulder and bear him home, and change his hea rt! And now! Now I love all Russians. It is our wish, Djemileh’s and mine, to go to them with the good news—Christ died! He was buried! He rose again!” Douglas instantly became conscious that a miracle had been performed here. While Kaimakov was telling of his hate it had seemed a terrible reality. It was evident that he had been a monster. And suddenly Douglas knew that he had had a glimpse into a fiery depth—deeper even than those chasms in the far-off Caucasian mountains! What depth is so deep or what fire is so hot as that in the soul that is plunged in the hate which emanates from hell ? And from this Kaimakov had been delivered j And by One whom he, Douglas, did not know. His father knew Him, he reflected, and Margaret too ! But Kaimakov here, and Djemileh—to them He was most unmistakably real. Was it that His visage was so obscured in his own soul that he could not make it out? Douglas wondered. But Kaimakov was speaking. “God brought us here, and your father and the other trustees found a little group of us from less fortunate lands. They made for us a place—like home—and gave us this mother.” Douglas perceived Aunt Margot in a corner arrayed in black silk and a muslin fichu. His soul, which had begun to open, now closed up. He suspected Donald Donaldson of designs upon him. Althea Sumner had warned him. “Look out, Doug! He will gbt you surely while you’re on your back,” she laughed. “One of the most fearful ‘witnessers’ I ever saw. Impossible to stop him. He drives right ahead. Rides over you roughshod. Worse than John Knox—or was it Calvin? Well, you know what I mean.” Douglas had laughed with Althea and taken Donald Donaldson rather lightly, to his father’s disappointment. Ridicule is one of the deadliest weapons employed by the great enemy of souls. It is especially harmful when used against God’s most earnest and zealous fishermen.’ There is little that their friends can say in their defense, for there is always the stock excuse, “Can’t they take a joke? Can’t we have a little laugh?” But God has wonderful ways of circumventing these wiles even when they are erriployed by His own children, as they sometimes—regrettably—are. Margaret wondered what God would do, and whis pered little prayers in her heart for Douglas. “It was not hate with me; it was pleasure.” The speaker’wore the Tartar costume and had played an in strument, but his features were those of the young mod ern Greek, and his accent was that of the young Europeari
They went down the stairs. They paused at the door of the long drawing room. Paused because' a sound of strange music was there. It was strange because barbaric, barbaric because four people in Tartar garb were squatting under an oriental hanging, playing a tar, a rebab, and the long-necked violin that is called the rebeck. The fourth instrument was a tambourine shaken softly and rythmic- ally. Three men and a girl, none of whom he had ever seen before, were making this music; and as they per ceived Douglas and Donald, the girl, who was thrumming- on the tar, which rather resembled a guitar, began to sing. A sweet, high voice it was, and her song was one of the tribal melodies of the Lesghi in the mountains of the Caucasus. It told, as folk songs do, even when almost inarticulate, of the/ heart burdens of a people. A sad minor strain it was, its refrain a weary, little wailing c ry ! These people were lost and there was none to seek and find them—at least, that was what the song seemed to be saying. The song was done and Douglas was being presented. These were Margaret’s friends. They had come from far-off southeastern Europe to far-distant southwestern America. They were to enter college the next semester. They had come because they believed as the Westerners in this new land believed. Douglas at once perceived that they had illusions about this new land and its believing inhabitants. He regretted this!; He was sorry for any one who cherished illusions—especially such guileless peo ple as these! He hoped the awakening would not be too sudden. The girl’s name was Djemileh and her brother was Kaimakov. Their family had been slain by the Russians when Djemileh was twelve and Kaimakov fourteen. Aunt Margot was to make a home for these and others like them who had come for shelter and education to this new land of ours. Oh! But their land, was very old, they told him, in delightful broken sentences. So old that even the soil became weary centuries ago. Arid so their forefathers had taken themselves to the mountains to become pillagers. Very strange mountains they were, made up of fearful heights and depths, of precipices and chasms! Mountains that towered in needle-like points to high heaven; and on the sides of these steeps their terrible warrior fathers had built the flat-topped clinging houses that made up their aouls. Djemileh and Kaimakov had lain flat for hours, after everyone in their village had been murdered, on one of these roofs, looking down into the frightful chasm •beneath them which seemed bottomless to their eyes. No! They had not been afraid! They were the children of warriors. It was the wife of a general who finally took them to Russia. She wished to adopt them because of their, beauty —this last was simply stated as an accepted natural fact that admitted of no denial. And indeed they had that interesting cast of countenance that in Slavic countries is called “beauty.” Douglas could hardly imagine them on the covers of a magazine, but Djemileh, especially, •was possessed of great charm. Her narrow slip of bright red silk, shot through with honey-colored stripes, and her hair in its cap-like net of golden links, were arresting. Why had they left Russia ? he asked, and Margaret’s heart gave a little bound. If they could only help him ! •“Because,” explained Kaimakov politely with a very sweet smile, “because it was there that we found and fol lowed the Star of Bethlehem one Christmas time. We had not known of the Babe in the manger and His mes
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