Dariel: A Romance of Surrey

"This was such a shock to me, that I could not reply immediately. Not that I cared for the cause of Islam, to which he had been devoted; neither did I detest the Russians, or dream that we, with so many races all at feud with one another, could ever form a nation. But I felt as any true man would feel, a reverence for this dauntless hero (who had held his own so long against resistless odds) and sorrow at the close of a career so grand.

"'I have fought a good fight. I have held the faith. I have not striven for my own glory, but in the cause of God most High. If it is His Holy will to forsake us, there is no more for man to do.'

"It was useless of course to argue with him. A man at all open to argument would not have done much against Russia. And when I met my few surviving friends among his gallant officers, they told me that his last defence was gone, his force reduced to four hundred men, and all his inaccessible retreats cut off. The enemy had blocked him in his last hole; for his own life he cared little, as he had proved a thousand times; but the few who still remained faithful to him, and were ready to die at his side, surely it would have been a mean requital to drive them like sheep into the butcher's yard. Therefore must he yield at last.

"We were talking dismally about all this, and saying that the mountains would never again be fit for a gentleman to live in, when I received another call to Shamyl's room, and had another interview with him. He had spent some time in prayer, and been rewarded with a holy vision from on high, so that his eyes were full of fire, and his countenance shone with happiness. One would scarcely believe that gloom and ferocity so often darkened that wondrous face.

"'I have received the word of the Lord, the holy voice of Allah, to whom be all praise and glory! Imar of the Kheusurs, it is not for thee to hear it, being but an outer infidel. It is commanded that thou shouldest depart from among the chosen warriors of heaven, that they who bear witness be of the true faith. If thou and thy men can escape, behold it is my duty to aid thee. And verily I rejoice, for thou hast been a faithful friend to us.'

"If he rejoiced, I could tell him of some one who rejoiced a hundred-fold, to escape a Russian jail and exile from his wife and children, even if his life were spared; of which there was no certainty, after the many atrocities committed by my very noble friend. Perhaps it was not magnanimous on my part to decline – if good luck should allow it – the glory of being shot or starved for the sake of the beloved country. But a lot of cross tangles came into that question. Was it my country in the first place? If it was, should I help it by quitting it so? And again, would that beloved land show equal love to me when gone, by attending to my belongings? No land I have heard of has ever done that. Therefore I showed my love of my country, by deciding to remain inside it.

"'Commander of the Caucasus,' I said, knowing that he liked that appellation, though he never commanded half of it; 'a revelation such as thine is not to be disregarded. But how is it to be carried out? By many devices, and some fighting, we have made our way to thee. But the foe hath closed in at our heels. Our little band could never hope to pass the Russian lines again. Thrice hast thou come to life again, when the enemy proclaimed thee dead. But this is beyond even thy resources.'

"He smiled, with the pleasant smile of a man who feels himself underrated. 'Imar, it is not that I am beaten in the powers of the mind,' he said, 'but never was there mortal born, and filled with the breath of the Lord from birth, who could vanquish the love of gold in men. The son of Manoah could not do it; neither even our Great Prophet. I, who have gifts from Heaven also, suited to a weaker age, am beaten by that accursed Power. It is gold alone that hath vanquished Shamyl.'

"Believing that this upon the whole was true, I left him to his sad reflections. But presently he raised his head again, and looked at me with his old grim smile. He spread out his woolly arms, and spoke with a large mouth quivering.

"'Knowest thou that I could carry off every man of my four hundred left, and laugh at the Russian beleaguerers? This night I would do it, and let them smell for us in the morning. But to what effect? To kill a Russian is no dinner. All the passes are closed against us, and all our villages occupied. The winter is nigh; we should be no more than hungry wolves upon the mountains. But thou art young, thou hast a home to go to, and art not of our religion. Take thy faithful fifty, and go this night. My son will show thee how. No more.'

"That was the last I saw of Shamyl, and this much I will say for him. He never sent any man to face a peril which he himself would shrink from, neither did he fight for his own ambition, or hide in his turban one copek. The Russians behaved very generously and even nobly to him; and in the quiet evening of his days he may have looked back with sorrow upon his barbarities against them.

"Our little band had never shared in any of those atrocities. Therefore it would be better for us, if we could not escape capture, to fall into the hands of the foe as a separate detachment, than to surrender with the General. And this was my reason for attempting an escape, rather than any fair prospect of success in such a situation. But strange to say, by means of a tunnel in the cliff unknown to the enemy, and then some most perilous scaling of rocks – such as Englishmen delight in, but a native of the mountains prefers to do by deputy – and then some midnight rushes through blockaded passes and defiles, we contrived with the loss of two men only to regain our own abodes. But more than a month had thus been spent after we quitted Shamyl, in wandering, fighting, and lying close, going out of our way for sustenance, and being driven out of it by enemies and tempests. With 50,000 men to stop them, not a horse to help them, no supplies to start with, and no village-folk to provide them, nothing but the fruit the bears had left, to keep body and soul together – even veterans of Shamyl's training might have been proud to force passage thus.

"Alas that we ever achieved it! For my men's sake I am glad, of course; but for my own, I would that God had seen fit in His mercy to lay me dead by a Russian gun, or stretch me frozen on the mountain side!"

CHAPTER XXV

IMAR'S TALE – CRIME

"It was late of an October afternoon, when my heart, which had been low with hunger, hardship, and long weariness, began to glow with hope and love, as I stood at the bottom of our Karthlos steep. There was no fusilier on guard; and the granite steps and groins were choked with snow; but I sent my followers to their homes, as was only fair to them, with orders to come to a sheep-and-goat supper, if their appetites remained, when they had embraced their families. Then I sounded the great horn, fogged with cob-webs, hanging above the lower gate, and with only my faithful milk-brother Stepan, and one other trooper who belonged to our old tower, breasted the rugged and crooked ascent.

"'How wild with delight will my Oria be!' I thought, as I laboured through the drifts, for there had been no opportunity of sending any letter. 'How lonely she must have been, sweet soul, and trembling with hope of a word from me!'

"But when we reached the upper gate, there was no one even there on guard. The brazen cannon once kept so bright were buried in winding sheets of snow; and even the terrace before the door, which it was a point of hospitality to keep clean-swept for travellers, was glittering with untrodden drift. We were all in such a ragged and savage state of body, that I had ordered my two men to go round to the entrance for the maidens, and meant to do the same myself, unless my darling met me. But now, in my fierce anxiety, I thrust the main doors open, and stood in the hall, which was cold and empty. No sound of my wife's step, no patter of little feet, no welcome, no answer, no gladness anywhere.

"Doubt and terror kept me standing there; but I shouted, in hope of some great mistake – 'Oria, my wife, my wife!' And then, upon the chance that she might be out – 'Orry, my little son, my boy!'

"My call rang along the passages on either side, and up the stairs, and shook the plumes of mountain-grass, which she had placed in the vases; but neither wife nor child appeared; and in my famished and haggard state I fell upon a chair, and my heart began to beat, as if it would leap out of me. Then I saw a tall and stately lady, in a dress of velvet, and with a serpent of white fur wound beneath her jewelled bosom, coming down the gray stone staircase, with her eyes fixed on me, but not a word of speech.

"My voice failed me, as it does in a dream, when a sword is pointed at one's throat; but the lady came and stood before me, and a child was clinging to her dress. She looked at me with some surprise, and contempt for my ragged condition, but spoke as if she had never known a tear.

"'Imar, art thou not in haste to embrace thy twin sister Marva? The wrong thou hast done should not destroy all memory of the early days, when hers was thine, and thine was hers. I am prepared to forgive thee, Imar, in this time of tribulation.'

"'To forgive! I never harmed thee, Va;' I answered, using her childish name, as I always did in thoughts of her. 'But none of that now. Where is my wife? Hath any one dared to injure her?'

"Weak as I was, I leaped up from the chair, and it would have gone ill with Marva – for what is a sister compared to a wife? – if she had showed signs of flinching. But she gazed at me with a quiet disdain, as if I could not command myself.

"'I have not touched thy precious wife. I have not even set eyes on her. She hath done the injury to me, that is worse than theft of goods and cattle. Yet have I come hither, to do the duty she hath forsaken, and comfort her deserted husband from his mad adventures, while his treasure of a wife, his Royal Princess Oria, heiress to a hundred thrones, is enjoying herself at the hot springs in the world of fashion and luxury, with my noble husband Rakhan.'

"What I said, or did, or thought, I know not – perhaps, nothing. The world was all in a whirl with me, and perhaps I fainted, in my worn-out state. It does not matter what I did. From the strongest man in the Caucasus, I was struck to the level of the weakest child. Even my twin sister, with a woman's petty spite inflamed by jealousy and bitter wrong, had some of the echoes of childhood roused, and thought of the time when she loved me.

"'It is the part of a fool,' she said, meaning it for large comfort, 'to be so wild about a woman, and the phantasy that they call love. When I was a child, I believed in it; and to what has it brought me? To cast away my life upon a man, who swore that I was all the world to him, and believed it perhaps, while I was new. But lo, in a year he was weary of me, because I made too much of him. Hath Princess Oria done that? Nay, or thou wouldst be weary of her. Tush, what careth she for her lord? And why should he take it to heart like this? There are plenty of women in the world, my brother; and the more their husbands make of them, the less will they return it. I am the one that should lament, not thou. For I have lost a man, but thou a woman only. My husband will come back to me when he is weary of thy Georgian doll; and I shall be forced to welcome him. But thou, such is the law, thou hast it at thy pleasure to be free.'

"'Talk not to me,' I said, for this was salt rubbed into my gashes; 'go and get me food, that I may recover a little of my strength. And then, thou also shalt be free.'

"Many a time have I wondered whether she knew what I meant by those last words. If she knew it, she said nothing, but marched away in her stately style, dragging by the hand her child, who had been staring at my face all the time, as if he had never seen a man before. Marva's own servants brought me food, and I knew not what it was, but took it, not for life so much as death – for death of Rakhan, the adulterer.

"Some sleep as well was needful to me, before I could accomplish that, – sleep to restore the power of thought which seemed to have left me imbecile, as well as the vigour of my jaded body. No further would I enter my own house, but collected some rugs and bearskins – for we had not even a bourka left – and was about to throw myself on a couch, when Marva's little boy came dancing, half in fright and half in glee at his own self-importance, with a crumpled letter for me. That she should send it by such hands is enough to show how she was changed. I saw that it was from my enemy, and by the light of the one lamp they had brought me read the words that follow: —

"'Beloved brother Imar, – As thou hast given me to wife a beggar, and a shrew to boot, it is but just that I should have a share of thine to comfort me. She is soft and young and fair; and I have taken such affection for her, and she for me, as the nature of women is, that I will not charge thee for her clothes and lodgings for at least a twelvemonth. Then if she hath a son, she shall remain another twelvemonth; for Marva's child, though strong and stout, is dumb from birth, and cannot be accepted therefore as Chief Prince of Ossets. Son of Dadian, this relieves thee of the cares that oppress thee most – the lust of money (which hath made thee play the rogue), the peril of subservience to thy wife, which overtaketh weak mankind, and the fear of having more children than thine avarice would make welcome. Thou hast robbed me of good substance; I relieve thee of light stuff. And even that, if thou carest to lay claim, thou shalt have again without any charge. Thy sister I leave to thy care meanwhile. She hath never had share of her father's goods; and even thy greed cannot deny her meal and milk, till her tongue grows mild. Her raiment is with her, and will last until I am ready for her again. Unless thou dost relax of the robbery thou hast rejoiced in for five years now, and givest her the garments of her mother, as well as the third part of her father's goods. Thy wife sends her duty to thee, and bids me say that she likes thee still, but loves the man who hath his arm around her, and doth not leave her to pine alone. We shall pass a month at Patigorsk where the hot springs tend to warmth of love. And then if thou hast aught to say, we shall not shut thee out again, after doing this for thy benefit. Thy good brother Rakhan, Prince of the ancient Ossets.'"

CHAPTER XXVI

IMAR'S TALE – REVENGE

"In the morning I arose with all my strength renewed, and the sense of wrong as cold as stone, and keen as steel throughout me. My brother Stepan was at my side, for he had come to watch me, knowing what I had endured, and fearing that it might outdo my sense of life. I smiled at him; and he saw that I would smile, until I made others weep. Not a word was said between us. My wrongs were hotter in his heart than in my own; for I felt doubts about myself, and he had none. By the sacred custom of our tribe, which is a very ancient one, he was bound to hold my welfare even dearer than his own. When the eldest son of the Chief is born, and old enough to shape his lips, he is sent round to the nursing mothers of the tribe to suckle. Whatever babe is placed with him at one breast, he at the other, thenceforth their lives are more than twin – for twins may often fall out and fight, as did myself and Marva, but never those milk-brothers. Stepan's mother was the first to whom I paid my duty in that tender way, and Stepan's arms were twined in mine; and nothing could sever our hearts thenceforth from the allegiance of boy twins.

"As I would not enter the inner chambers, where I had been so happy, Stepan led me to the bath, and fetched another suit of travelling clothes, and everything I wanted, not forgetting a trusty sword and a pair of heavy pistols. Then we had breakfast, and set forth without a word to Marva. My children even I durst not ask for, fearing to hear that their mother had carried them into my dishonour.

"But luckily my good horse Ardon, who had borne me through many adventures, had been left at home when I last set forth, and was neighing for me in the road below, for none but a mule or mountain-pony could clamber up the steep access. Our vehicles also we kept below, using hand-litters to the gates of Karthlos, for ladies or feeble travellers. And thus we three set forth on horseback, with provisions for three days – myself, and Stepan, and the other trooper who had returned with me from Guinib, a faithful and brave fellow who is with me now, named Usnik. Others would have joined us in the valley, but I would not have them. Enough of disgrace already.

"The roads, or tracks as you would call them, bad enough at any time, were now at many places blocked by heavy and windy snowfalls; for the season was come to the middle of October, and winter had set in early. Any one who sees not much of such things, and might be in a mood to consider them, would have found no small delight in the grandeur of the world around. But all that I could think of was the bitterness and baseness of the human race that breathed therein; and when we had passed the post-house (where I kept my troika for long journeys) and learned that the Princess had taken my carriage three days ago, when the weather was fair, and ordered the driver to proceed with all possible haste to Patigorsk, my last hope fell, and before me rose only the fury of revenge, and then the despair of a desert life.

"To that town, whose name was now poison to me, where dissolute Russians came to revel, and vile Circassians to sell their daughters, the journey from Karthlos in the best of weather was a matter of three days; and now with the road so cumbered, and the buffet of thick snowstorms often dashing in our faces, it seemed as if a week was likely still to find us struggling vainly. But about noontide of the second day, being on the northern fall of mountains, and within the boundaries of Ossetland, we came to a fork of the torrent channel which here served for a roadway, and we knew not whether to go right or left. As for any guidance the chance was small, one traveller in a winter week was enough for such a road as that. The harvesting of the tissue-grass between the crags was over; the neatherd, the shepherd, and the goatherd had long driven home their charges. We knew not what to do, until one of us espied a little drift of smoke among the pine-trees on the ridge, and I sent the hardy Usnik on foot in that direction, while we rested the horses and awaited his return. By this time the wind had dropped a little, but a white vapour rolled in and out the crags and forest, as if a giant lay snorting among them, and the air felt like the breath of death. Stepan strode up and down, when he had tied the horses, slapping his bosom to keep himself warm; but I sat upon a rock, and cast my eyes upon the ground. I was thinking of what I had heard from an Englishman, who had been our guest at Karthlos. He had told me of the savage gaze of Prince Rakhan, at my then beloved wife, when he met her at our summer-feast of roses, when I had been called away from home.

"'Why, who comes here on this evil travelling day?' cried Stepan, turning suddenly. 'My lord will have company, I think; but not of the kind he delights in.'

"His dark look showed me that there was something to be met, and, leaping to my feet, I beheld a company of horsemen advancing towards us by the road upon our left. They broke through the drifts by twos and threes, which was all that the track in its widest parts admitted; but the one who rode first rode singly, and he was a big man, stern and swarthy. The slope they were descending showed us a score of men, well-armed, behind him.

"'Behold they are too many for us! Let us fly up the other road.' Stepan loosed the horses as he spoke. 'They will kill my lord, and then where is our revenge?'

"'What matters my life to me? Whoever they are, I will not fly. But why should they desire to kill us, Stepan? They look not like bandits; and they are not Russians.'

"'Nay, but they are worse than either. They are Ossets of the Karai Khokh, who go either side of the mountains. Their Chief is dead, and they are Rakhan's children now. Rakhan rides first in this handful.'

"'Rakhan shall have speech with me,' I spoke, with the heart of my spirit rising, as the Lord has granted it to rise when He has beaten down the body. 'Rakhan is welcome! I will salute him.'

"The man had been out of my sight so long (not only because of my service with Shamyl, but through his own avoidance of me) that I did not know his face for certain till I met his eyes. Then I felt sure what my duty was; as God himself ordained it, when He made man to be true to woman, and woman true to man, and their children to spring of their own loins, – there was no choice left me but to slay this man, or be slain by him.

"Having this within my mind, and being calmer than I can be now in looking back upon it, I stood across the narrow track, and took the horse that Rakhan rode by the head, and gazed at Rakhan. He was amazed at first, and the colour of his great black eyes turned paler, and he fumbled for a pistol, without daring to take his gaze from mine. I would not speak, but I struck his hand up with a flip of mine. The lips that had sullied my dear wife's should have no sort of speech with mine. He tried to regard me humorously, as a man who thinks woman his slave blinks eye, when the question is about her; but the sparkle of his gaze died under mine, like an ember with the sun on it.

"'Get off thy horse, Prince Rakhan,' Stepan shouted, with his big arm laid across. 'The time hath come for man to man, instead of lying with another man's wife.'

"Rakhan made pretence to smile, and to leap from horseback lightly. 'What a stir to make about a light-of-love! Fool that knows not what a woman is! Stand back, my sons; this is not for you.'

"The Ossets took their orders gladly. Every savage man loves to see a fight. They leaped from their horses, and squatted in the snow, and filled their pipes, and kindled them.

"There was a clear place close at hand, with a ring of black cedars round it, and room inside for stepping to and fro, if life and death required it. I threw off my furs, and so did he; and we stood against one another.