Part 4

EVERY man, says a philosopher, is a wanderer at heart. Alas! I fear the axiom would be truer if he had confined himself to stating that every man loves to fancy himself a wanderer, for when it comes to the point there is not one in a thousand who can throw off the ties of civilized existence--the ties and the comforts of habits which have become easy to him by long use, of the life whose security is ample compensation for its monotony. Yet there are moments when the cabined spirit longs for liberty. A man stands a-tiptoe on the verge of the unknown world which lures him with its vague promises; the peaceful years behind lose all their value in his dazzled eyes; like him, ‘qui n’a pas du ciel que ce qui brille par le trou du volet,’ he pines to stand in the great free sunlight, the great wide world which is all too narrow for his adventurous energy. For one brief moment he shakes off the traditions of a lifetime, swept away by the mighty current which silently, darkly, goes watering the roots of his race. He, too, is a wanderer like his remote forefathers; his heart beats time with the hearts long stilled that dwelt in their bosoms, who came sweeping out of the mysterious East, pressing ever resistlessly onward till the grim waste of Atlantic waters bade them stay. He remembers the look of the boundless plain stretching before him, the nights when the dome of the sky was his ceiling, when he was awakened by the cold kisses of the wind that flies before the dawn. He cries for space to fling out his fighting arm; he burns to measure himself unfettered with the forces of God.

Many hundreds of miles away, to the southward of the Caspian Sea, lies a country still untraversed by highroad or railway line. Here rise mountains clothed in the spring with a gay mantle of crocuses and wild tulips, but on whose scorched sides the burning summer sun leaves nothing but a low growth of thorns; here are steep valleys, where the shadows fall early and rise late, strewn with rocks, crowned with fantastic crags, scarred with deep watercourses; here the hawks hover, the eagle passes with mournful cry, and the prisoned wind dashes madly through the gorge. Here lie reaches of plain bounded on all sides by the mountain wall, plateau after thorny plateau--a rolling wilderness over which the headlands stand out as over a sea. Through the middle of the plain flows a river, its stony bed cut deep into the earth; silver trout leap in its pools, strips of grass border it--stretches of pastureland in the midst of the desert--flocks of goats feed along its banks, and from some convenient hollow rises the smoke of a nomad camp.

For beautiful as it is in its majestic loneliness, this country is not one where men are tempted to seek an abiding dwelling. In the spring, when the fresh grass clothes the bottom of the valleys, in the summer, when the cool winds sweep the plain, they are content to pitch their tents here; but with the first nip of autumn cold they strike camp, and are off to warmer levels, leaving the high snow-carpeted regions empty of all inhabitants but the wild goats and the eagles. To-day, perhaps, the gloomiest depth of a narrow gorge, which looks as though from the time of its creation no living thing had disturbed its solitude, is strewn with black tents, flocks of horses and camels crop the grass by the edge of the stream, the air is full of the barking of dogs and the cries of women and children; but to-morrow no sign of life remains--the nomads have moved onward, silence has spread itself like a mantle from mountain to mountain, and who can tell what sound will next strike against their walls?

The sight fills you at first with a delightful sense of irresponsibility. Go where you will, the rocks will retain no impress of your footsteps; dwell where you please, the mountains are your only witnesses, and they gaze with equal indifference on your presence and on your absence. But the fitfulness of human habitation among them, the absence of any effort to civilize them, to make them shelter man and minister to his wants, gives them an air of stubborn hopeless sterility, very imposing, very repelling. Gradually the loneliness will strike into your heart with a feeling almost akin to horror. We are not accustomed to finding ourselves face to face with nature. Even the most trivial evidences of the lordship of man afford a certain sense of protection--the little path leading you along the easiest slope, the green bench selecting for you the best view, the wooden finger-post with ‘Zum Wasserfall’ written up upon it in large letters telling you what other men have thought worth seeing. Other men have been there before--they have smoothed out the way for you--you will find them waiting at the end, and ready to provide you with shelter and with food.... But here there is nothing--nothing but vast and pathless loneliness, silent and desolate.

For the nomads can no more give you a sense of companionship than the wild goats; they are equally unconscious of the desolation which surrounds them. All day long the men lie before the low doors of their tents lazily watching the grazing herds; towards evening, perhaps, they will stroll along the banks of the river with a bent stick for fishing-rod, dropping a skilful line into the pools where lie the guileless trout of those waters. Meantime the women sit weaving the coarse black roofs which shelter them, or twisting the yellow reeds into matting for walls, working so deftly that in an incredibly short time a new dwelling has grown under their fingers. In the clear sunlight the encampment looks sordid enough; night, which with sudden fingers sweeps away the sun, revealing the great depths of heaven and the patined stars, reveals also the mysterious picturesqueness of camp-life. The red light of the fires flickers between the tents; the crouching figures of men and women preparing the evening meal seem to be whispering incantations into the hot ashes. They rise, dim and gigantic, with faces gleaming in the uncertain starlight; they flit like demons backwards and forwards between the glowing rays of the fires and the darkness beyond. You find yourself transplanted into a circle of the Inferno, of which the shaggy dogs that leap out barking to meet you are no less vigilant guardians than Cerberus himself A woman with neck and breast uncovered catches you by the sleeve, and offers to sell you a bowl of clotted cream or a vociferous fowl; her dark eyes glisten through the dusk as she tosses the matted hair from her forehead; perhaps if you stayed to eat at the bidding of this Queen of Dis you would be kept eternally a prisoner in her mournful domains. With the dawn the mystery vanishes--the place through which you passed last night is only a dull little camp, after all--and this woman clothed in dirty rags, is it possible that she can be the regal figure of last night?

But daylight will not bring you into closer fellowship with the nomads; even if you fall into speech with one of them, there are few common topics on which you can converse. He will question you as to your nationality. Are you a Russian? he inquires, naming probably the only European nation he knows. You try to explain that you are English, and come from far across the seas; and he listens attentively, though you know that your words throw no light on his boundless ignorance. Presently he will change the conversation to matters more within his understanding. What news is there of the Shah? Is he coming this summer to his camp at Siah Palas? Has the sickness struck him? The sickness! So with terrible significance he speaks of the cholera which is ravaging the country, and goes on to tell you that he and his family are flying before it. ‘From over there they have come,’ pointing to distant valleys. ‘The sickness fell on them; eleven of their men died, and since they moved down here two more have been carried off.’ A sudden picture of grim fear flashes up before you at his simple words. With what shapeless terror does the plague fill the feeble little camp! With what awful solemnity must the dead body invest the frail, small hut! What wailing cries take the place of all the cheerful sounds, and with what hurried dread is the corpse committed to an unremembered grave! Many processions of villages on the march pass you now, flying from the terror of death--a little herd of goats and horses driven by the children, a few camels carrying the rolled-up bundles of reed-dwellings, on the top of which sit the men of the family, women on foot following in the rear, a convoy of yellow dogs barking round the tiny caravan into whose narrow compass all the worldly goods of so many human beings are compressed.

But the nomads are not the only inhabitants of the valley; there are one or two more luxurious encampments. An Indian prince has pitched his camp there, and greets you as you pass, fishing-rod in hand, with an amicable ‘Good-evenin’, sar.’ His scanty English, confined though it be to this one salutation, somewhat destroys the local colour of the scene. Noble Persians fly in the summer to this cool retreat, pitching elaborate tents of French or Indian manufacture by the edge of the river, stabling thirty or forty horses in the open air, riding through the country attended by an army of servants whom they carry with them even on their fishing expeditions, and who follow close behind their masters when they venture waist-high into the stream in the enthusiasm of sport. The grandees bring their women with them; white canvas walls enclose the tents of wives and daughters whom captivity holds even in these free solitudes, and their negro attendants are familiar figures by the river sallows, where their shrouded forms hover sadly. They understand camp life, these Persian noblemen; they are as much at home among the mountains as in their gardens and palaces. Their lavish magnificence is not out of keeping with the splendours of nature.... But you are only playing at nomads, after all, and when the moonlight strikes the wall of rock behind your camp, you try to banish from your mind the recollection of painted theatre scenes which it involuntarily suggests, and which makes it all seem so unreal to you.

Unreal--unreal! ‘The fancy cannot cheat so well as she is famed to do.’ In vain you try to imagine yourself akin to these tented races, in vain you watch and imitate their comings and goings; the whole life is too strange, too far away. It is half vision and half nightmare; nor have you any place among dwellers in tents. Like the empty bottles and greased papers with which a troop of Bank-holiday Philistines sullies the purity of a purple moor, your presence is a blot on the wild surroundings, a hint of desecration.

Return to your cities, to your smooth paths and ordered lives; these are not of your kindred. The irretrievable centuries lie between, and the stream of civilization has carried you away from the eternal loneliness of the mountains.

_THREE NOBLE LADIES_

WHEN the Shah takes a girl into his andarun it is said to be a matter for universal rejoicing among her family, not so much because of the honour he has done her, as because her relatives look to using her influence as a means of gaining for themselves many an envied favour. For aught I know to the contrary, the girl, too, may think herself a fortunate creature, and the important position of the one man she may possibly govern may console her for the monotony of her kingdom; but however delightful as a place of abode the royal andarun may be, in one respect it must fall short of the delights of the kingdom of heaven--there cannot fail to be endless talk of marrying and giving in marriage within its walls. The number of the Shah’s wives is great, and he is blessed with a proportionately large family; it must therefore be difficult to find a sufficiency of high-born suitors with whom to match his daughters. Moreover, there may be a trace of reluctance in the attitude of the suitors themselves, for the privilege of being the Shah’s son-in-law is not without its disadvantages. If the nobleman selected happen to be wealthy, the Shah will make their close relationship an excuse for demanding from him large gifts; if at any subsequent period he should have a mind to take another wife, the etiquette of the Court will stand in his way; and still worse, if he be already married, he will find himself obliged to seek a divorce from his wife that he may obey the Shah’s command. The negotiations preceding the match must be complicated in the extreme, and great must be the excitement in the andarun before they are concluded.

With one such household we were acquainted. The husband, whose title may be translated as the Assayer of Provinces, was a charming person, who had spent much of his youth (much also of his fortune) in Paris. He was a cultivated man and an enthusiast for sports; a lover of dogs, which for most Persians are unclean animals, and a devotee to the art of fishing. He had suffered not a little at the hands of his royal father-in-law, and had withdrawn in indignation from all public life, spending his days in hunting and shooting, in improving his breed of horses, and in looking after his estates. His residence abroad had made him more liberal-minded than most of his countrymen. He paid special attention to the education of his daughters, refused to allow them to be married before they had reached a reasonable age, and gave them such freedom as was consistent with their rank. They were two in number; we made their acquaintance, and that of the Princess their mother, one afternoon in Tehran.

Now, an afternoon call in Persia is not to be lightly regarded; it is a matter of much ceremony, and it lasts two hours. When we arrived at the house where the three ladies lived, we were conducted through a couple of courts and a long passage, and shown into a room whose windows opened into a vine-wreathed veranda. There was nothing Oriental in its aspect: a modern French carpet, with a pattern of big red roses on a white ground, covered the floor; photographs and looking-glasses hung upon the walls; the mantelpiece was adorned with elaborate vases under glass shades, and on some brackets stood plaster casts of statues. We might have imagined ourselves in a French château, but for the appearance of the châtelaine.

The Princess was a woman of middle age, very fat and very dark; her black eyebrows met together across her forehead; on her lips there was more than the suspicion of a moustache; the lower part of her face was heavy, and its outline lost itself in her neck. The indoor costume of a Persian lady is not becoming. She wears very full skirts, reaching barely to the knee, and standing out round her like those of a ballet-dancer; her legs are clothed in white cotton stockings, and on her feet are satin slippers. These details are partly concealed by an outer robe, unfastened in front, which the wearer clutches awkwardly over her bulging skirts, and which opens as she walks, revealing a length of white cotton ankles. In the case of the Princess this garment was of pale blue brocade. She wore her hair loose, and a white muslin veil was bound low upon her forehead, falling down over the hair behind. She was too civilized a woman to have recourse to the cosmetics which are customary in the East; the orange-stain of henna was absent from her finger-nails, and in the course of conversation she expressed much disapproval of the habit of painting the eyes, and great astonishment when we informed her that such barbarism was not unknown even in England.

It must not be imagined that the conversation was of an animated nature. In spite of all our efforts and of those of the French lady who acted as interpreter, it languished woefully from time to time. Our hostess could speak some French, but she was too shy to exhibit this accomplishment, and not all the persuasions of her companion could induce her to venture upon more than an occasional word. She received our remarks with a nervous giggle, turning aside her head and burying her face in her pocket-handkerchief, while the Frenchwoman replied for her, ‘Her Royal Highness thinks so and so.’ When the interview had lasted for about half an hour, cups of tea were brought in and set on a round table in the midst of us; shortly afterwards the two daughters entered, sweeping over the floor towards us in green and pink satin garments, and taking their places at the table. The younger girl was about sixteen, an attractive and demure little person, whose muslin veil encircled a very round and childish face; the other was two years older, dark, like her mother, though her complexion was of a more transparent olive, and in her curly hair there were lights which were almost brown. Her lips were, perhaps, a little too thick, though they were charmingly curved, and her eyes were big and brown and almond-shaped, with long lashes and a limpid, pathetic expression--just such an expression as you see in the trustful eyes of a dog when he pushes his nose into your hand in token of friendship. Nor did her confiding air belie her: she took our hands in her little brown ones and told us shyly about her studies, her Arabic, and her music, and the French newspapers over which she puzzled her pretty head, speaking in a very low, sweet voice, casting down her black eyelashes when we questioned her, and answering in her soft guttural speech: ‘Baleh Khanum’--‘Yes, madam,’ or with a little laugh and a slow, surprised ‘Naghai-ai-r!’ when she wished to negative some proposition which was out of the range of her small experience.

During the course of the next hour we were regaled on lemon ices, and after we had eaten them it was proposed that we should be taken into the garden. So we wandered out hand-in-hand, stopping to speak to an unfriendly monkey who was chained under the oleanders, and who turned a deaf ear to all our blandishments. In the garden there was a large pond, on the banks of which lay a canoe--an inconvenient vessel, one would imagine, for ladies attired in stiff and voluminous petticoats! Tents were pitched on the lawn, for our hostesses were on the eve of departure for their summer camp in the mountains, and had been examining the condition of their future lodgings. The garden, with its tents and its water, was like some fantastic opera stage, and the women, in their strange bright garments, the masqueraders, who would begin to dance a _pas de trois_ before us as soon as the orchestra should strike up. But the play was unaccountably delayed, and while we sat under the trees servants appeared bringing coffee, a signal that the appointed time of our visit had come to an end, and that we might be permitted to take our leave. The girls accompanied us into the outer court, and watched us through the half-open doors till we drove away, wishing, perhaps, that they too might drive out into the world with such unfettered liberty, or perhaps wondering at our unveiled shamelessness.

We went to see the three ladies again when we were in the mountains. Their camp was pitched about a mile lower down the river than ours, on a grassy plateau, from which they had a magnificent view down the long bare valley and across mountains crowned by the white peak of Demavend. No sooner had we forded the river in front of our tents than a storm of wind and rain and hail broke upon us, but we continued dauntlessly on our way, for the day of our visit had been fixed some time before, and it was almost pleasant after the summer’s drought to feel the rain beating on our faces. When we reached the Persian camp we dismounted before a canvas wall which surrounded the women’s tents, a curtain was drawn aside for us by a negro slave, and we were taken into a large tent, where the Princess was sitting on a rolled-up bed for sofa. We greeted her with chattering teeth and sat down on some wooden chairs round her, carrying on a laboured conversation in the French tongue, while our wet clothes grew ever colder upon us. We remembered the steaming cups of tea of our former visit, and prayed that they might speedily make their appearance, but, alas! on this occasion they were omitted, and lemon ices alone were offered to us. It is not to be denied that lemon ices have their merit on a hot summer afternoon, but the Persian’s one idea of hospitality is to give you lemon ices--lemon ices in hail storms, lemon ices when you are drenched with rain, lemon ices when a biting wind is blowing through the tent door--it was more than the best regulated constitution could stand. We politely refused them.

An important event had taken place in the household during the last two months: a marriage had been arranged between the eldest daughter and a young Persian nobleman, whose wealth and influence matched themselves satisfactorily with her rank. He, too, was spending the summer in the mountains; his camp lay a little beyond ours, and we were therefore able to observe the daily visits which took place between him and his future father-in-law, when they rode, attended by troops of mounted servants, backwards and forwards along the stony bridle-path on the opposite bank. Doubtless great discussions of the approaching marriage and of the art of fly-fishing took place in those August days. We stood in the centre of this Oriental romance, and felt as though we were lending a friendly hand to the negotiations. Certainly, if good wishes could help them, we did much for the young couple.

The Assayer of Provinces spent most of his time trout-fishing. He used to make us presents of gaudy flies manufactured by his negro slave (himself a most successful fisherman), and we found that these attracted the trout of the Lar considerably more than our March browns and palmers. The eldest daughter shared her father’s taste. When she and her sister joined us in her mother’s tent that thundery afternoon, we fell into a lively discussion of the joys and the disappointments of the sport, comparing the number of fish we had killed and the size of our largest victim. The Persian girls had never gone far afield--they contented themselves with the pools and streams near their tents--but that they should fish at all spoke volumes for their energy. To throw a well-considered fly is a difficult art at best, but to throw it when you are enveloped from head to foot in sweeping robes must be well-nigh impossible.

This second visit passed more cheerfully than the first. The fresh mountain wind had blown away the mists of ceremony, there was no interpreter between us, and we had a common interest on which to exchange our opinions. That is the secret of agreeable conversation. It is not originality which charms; even wit ceases in the end to provoke a smile. The true pleasure is to recount your own doings to your fellow-man, and if by a lucky chance you find that he has been doing precisely the same thing, and is therefore able to listen and reply with understanding, no further bond is needed for perfect friendship. Unfortunately, this tie was lacking between us and the monkey, who was also in villeggiatura by the banks of the Lar, and in consequence we got no further forward with him than before. Our presence seemed, indeed, to exasperate him more than ever. He spent the time of our visit making spiteful dashes at us, in the vain hope that the gods might in the end reward his perseverance and lengthen his chain sufficiently to allow him to bite us but once before we left.