The Reverend Mother came in through the low door. There was a crowd of sallow interested faces peering over her shoulders and her blue robes were the colour of the summer night sky. The old man came after her, carrying saddle-bags full of food and wine.
“I brought these,” said the Reverend Mother presently, with her mouth full of cold mountain guinea-fowl and indicating her provisions with its leg, “as it is said in our village that there is no food in the Khar-el-Nadoon, honoured Gyges.”
“It is a lie,” said Gyges tranquilly. “No doubt the black-hearted sons of the she-dogs, the Italians, set it about to cast shame on the name of our valley and to fill the hearts of other villages with despair.”
“Yes, yes, no doubt,” murmured all the aunts and cousins and the young women and the servants and the crowd of faces at the door, eagerly nodding, and one or two of them spat.
“Never have we known hunger in this valley, Holy One,” spoke up a large, plump male cousin.
“It is well. My heart is light.” The Reverend Mother wiped her fingers upon an embroidered towel held to her by a servant and drank some wine. Then she said:
“There is a letter from thy Vartouhi, honoured Gyges. I have it in my girdle. It came——” and she pointed up to the ceiling and smiled. A murmur of laughter ran round the room and spread to the crowd outside, and everyone nodded. “Sister B’fera was working in the garden and one of the flying men came over in his flying-machine, so low, so low, that she feared for our roofs. She summoned me and we all ran out, praying him to spare us, and he waved his hand to us, laughing. I myself saw his face and had no fear, although he was young and therefore heedless. Then he sent forth a little white thing shaped like a globeflower and it came down, down, down so slowly and lodged in a high beech tree on the path up to the ancient ruins. I sent Hussein to climb the tree, and he brought down the white globeflower-thing, which was made of fine silk and very fair to see, and lo! it was carrying a little packet with sweet dark food and some sayings of those two wise men in the Land of Ships and Am-erica——”
Here there were murmurs of “Ch—ch’l” and “Ros’vl” from everybody and more nods and smiles. Only the faces of the beggars, who crouched outside the circle of light and gnawed the bones of the lamb which the servants had thrown out to them, remained exhausted and grave, as if they did not understand.
“—and this letter from thy Vartouhi, honoured Gyges, which I will now read to thee.”
She took a leather bag, which was attached to her hemp girdle, from the folds of her robe and brought out a letter and began to read, in the midst of an attentive hush. Gyges had made an imperious gesture and the wireless had been silenced.
Honoured Father, honoured Mother, and my dear sisters,
In the name of God the All-Merciful and All-Wise, greetings. Blessed be the house, and all that dwell therein, and all who are far away. I am well, and my heart is light. I am to be married in the Month of Setting Fruit to a rich English man. Thou wilt remember, my sisters Djura and K’ussa and Yilg, how our sister Yania and I, thy sister Vartouhi, would sit when we were all little maids on the wall above the stream and talk of what we would do when we wore the folded cap of womanhood. Thou rememberest? Yania and I vowed that we would marry rich lords. Now we are both to do as we said. Yania’s lord is an American and my lord is English. Thou wilt remember, honoured father and honoured mother, that in the house where I worked as a servant there was a large and comely man, Kenneth Fielding, whose sister ruled him in all things. From the first I looked upon him with kindness and I thought, I will wed this man. And he looked upon me with kindness also. But his wicked sister drove me away because I made for him a djan for his bed, after our custom towards a warrior when we wish to show him that we would marry him should he ask. (He is a soldier, this man; a captain.) My heart was angry and I went away, thinking, there are other rich lords in England and I will find one for myself, and I will think no more about Kenneth Fielding. But lo! he came after me and found me, and now we are to be married.
I ask for thy blessing, honoured father and mother.
Kenneth Fielding’s aged and honourable father will live in our house (couldst thou but see it! with the gardens for fruit and the gardens for vegetables and the little house where the food lives, where snow is made all the year round!). His aged and honourable cousin will also live in our house. The wicked sister I have sent away, but she too is to be married, although she is an old, old woman of fifty-three years. She is to marry an old, old man of fifty-eight years. They will have no children. But I shall have many children and when this war is ended and all the wicked Germans and Italians and Japanese are dead I and my husband and my children will come on a visit to the Khar-el-Nadoon and hold thine honoured hands against our hearts.
Farewell, honoured father and mother and farewell to you, dear sisters. I will call my firstborn daughter in the name of my niece Medora.
In the name of God the All-Merciful and All-Wise, blessings on the house, and all that dwell therein, and all who are far away.
Thy daughter,
VARTOUHI.
A babel of voices broke out as the Reverend Mother ceased to read. The letter was passed from hand to hand and Medora, now a slender maiden of ten who had been allowed to return from Turkey, insisted upon having the reference to herself read out to her a second time. She listened shyly, with her thick plaits of fair hair decorated with gold coins falling against her cheeks.
“Ah, soon it will be thy turn!” cried her grandmother, glancing at Djura and Yilg, who at fifteen and seventeen were not yet betrothed. “If thou art not betrothed by thy fourteenth year, come not to me for thy bridal linen!” Medora put her hand over her mouth and her long eyes danced in laughter as she ran away to a far corner of the room.
“But indeed,” continued Fayet, “is there not hope for all maidens, however old, when a maiden fifty-three years old can be married?”
There was a murmur of astonishment and assent.
“And in spite of this woman’s great age and her barrenness, it is well,” concluded Vartouhi’s mother authoritatively, taking a sweet rolled in powdered sugar and glancing about the room. “Young or old, fair or ugly, man or woman (unless of course they be vowed to God like thyself, Holy One), it is well to be married.”
THE END
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Copyright © Stella Gibbons 1944
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First published in Great Britain by Longmans, Green & Co. Ltd in 1944
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Stella Gibbons, The Bachelor
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