Dariel: A Romance of Surrey

"For the Lordship I care not. Thou hast done thy best from my birth to make me what thou art not – a woman. Hisar is more to thee than I am, though he is but a stranger. But he shall never be Lord of Lura; for I know that she hates him, and he would grind her into dust. For her sake, I will do this thing; loathsome as it is to me, since it must be done by somebody. But remember one thing, if I am forced to this – never more will I call thee mother."

"Poor fool! Does he think he will have the chance?" she muttered, as he strode away repenting already in his soft young heart of words that might have been too harsh. "Child of the detested Oria, better for thee to have died than led my own dear little one to his death. Thou hast escaped the precipice, but the Russian mines shall be thy doom. Hisar, where art thou, my son? Heardest thou what that spoon-pap said? This hut shall have a golden door, and walls of lapislazuli. Within it Oria slew herself; and within it her first-born has sealed himself for Siberia."

Hisar came forth from the inner room, so fateful to Sûr Imar, and for once his surly face looked bright. Since his return he had thought scorn of his native land and all therein; but he durst not show his mother that.

"Madam, it is nobly designed," he said, "and all in strict accord with law. Pedrel first, he shall have his wages, for which he has dared to follow me hither, and to plague me about marriage with his sister. Then to see that pious Imar fall by the hand of his sanctimonious son; to explain to that sweet saint what he has done; and then to deliver him to the Russians to be tried for parricide! It is high time to be quit of him. He begins to show cheek, as the men of England say. I could have stabbed him yesterday, if it were not for spoiling your noble scheme. Oh, mother, the eagles of Rakhabat alone can have brought thee such counsel from the clouds above! I am clever, and full of great devices, but never could I have invented this."

"My child, it is but one of many that have entered into my swift mind. When I was a girl among the nuns, to pass the winter nights, we used to relate delightful stories, far more ingenious than this. The difficulty is not to think them, but to do them, to make a great success of them. This we have not accomplished yet; but I see not how it can slip from our hands. So far, things have worked well for us. Even the weather has taken our part. That spy of a Svân is wolf's meat ere now, and there is not a Lesghian this side of Karthlos. No fear of that meddlesome Briton, I trow, or of Stroke, the drunken traveller, who threatened to come after thee."

"Would that I could catch them in our valleys, mother! George the farmer would have small chance then of swinging his gun, and singing psalms with the angelic Dariel! How I scorn and hate soft women! And they love me not. All love and liking hath gone to the meek and milky Lesghian 'Hafer;' as thou hast chosen to call him. Therefore, to the Russian hell with him! But of one thing I would warn thee, much admired and beloved mother. When we have torn the red cross down, and cast it beneath the white sheepskin, and filled our belts with the gold of Imar, not long will I tarry in these dens of rock fit only for the hermit and the huntsman. Of Selina I am already weary, and soon as my heart is weary both of Dariel and Lura – since the ancient law allows us twain, which is less than the wisdom of the Moslem – I shall leave thee to command this savage race, and take their tributes for me. Yearly will I come to see thee, and my two devoted wives, when the harvest-time is on, and cities are too hot to dwell in. But London and Paris, Paris and London, will be the delight of Hisar."

The Princess had heard this more than once, and it did not distress her. She had none to love or plot for now, except this savage Hisar, her own, but unacknowledged son. Forsooth when Rakhan proved himself both brutal and faithless to her, and quitted her before the birth of the genuine Osset Hafer, and wandered with a light-of-love, the outraged wife took her revenge, according to the manner of the country, by encouraging a Khabardan chief, a bold and haughty Mussulman. Hisar, born of this transmontane sally, about two years after the true Hafer's birth, but before his death at Karthlos, was of necessity kept from sight during every return of Rakhan. That strong-willed savage, like many others, allowed unlimited action to himself, but passion only in the passive form to those who might have saved his soul, if there had been any heart behind it.

"Thou art not fit to govern men," the Princess Marva looked at Hisar with a smile of mild contempt, which would have been anything but mild to any other woman's son; "but there is time enough to learn all that. Fierce enough thou art; and that is the understreak of all government. All the needful frauds will flow into thy noble spirit, when thy truest friends and warmest loves have shown thee what the onyx is."

CHAPTER LIV

THE VALLEY OF RETRIBUTION

Usi, the Svân, came up to me, in the first gleam of the morning, when the valleys were spiral snakes of white and the peaks were horns bedight with rose, as in a Roman sacrifice. We had struggled and scrambled, by Stepan's guidance, under the weak help of the moon, until jaded legs and burdened arms were like branches that droop with their own weight. Strogue most of all, after resting so long at the fountain of the London Rock, felt need of refreshment beyond the supply, and found tumbles less cheerful than tumblers. However, whenever we could stop to feed he was as brisk as the youngest of the party.

Then Usi, as I said, came round a crag with the light step of a mountaineer, and touched me on the elbow. I followed him into a piece of thicket, and there found our interpreter, a man of many accomplishments, and perceptive of their value. The Bear-slayer carried a long dull gun of ancient make and heavy substance, with the barrel stained by smoke and fire, and the carving of the stock turned black. Waving it proudly he began to speak; and what he said was rendered thus, though interpretation was growing needless as between his hits and mine.

"I am a man of piety not common among soldiers, and never yet heard of among the Svâns. For this cause hath the Lord preserved me from wolves, and daggers, and Marva. And not only me hath He preserved, but also this long pipe of Shamyl, this instrument of justice, renowned for laying low the sinners who have persecuted Usi. From the blazing of fire and the hands of thieves the Almighty hath restored it for a holy purpose. I will not boast; that now remains for the young man or the coward. But I have seen in a dream of the night the proud eyes and the swelling breast laid low.

"I have a scheme of my own devising, by which perchance the Lord of Christians, the greatest officer of Shamyl, and his dear child may keep their breath. Know you not that the murderers will guard their dungeon-gate in force, and as soon as we assault the valley, they will rush in and slay the prisoners? Of what avail will it be then, for us to pour our strength in after them? Rather let the captain, and his brave men, lie dark at the mouth of the valley, until the chief who hath justice in his eyes is brought forth for the death pronounced. Meanwhile, if there be any man young, and strong, and fearless, to whom the lives of the prisoners are as precious as his own life, let him descend and lie hidden in the valley between the murderers and the prison-gate, with an implement such as I have seen, but know not how to handle, for it was not discovered in our war-time, a fire-arm which contains the death of four men in close combat. Also let two men of straight pipes – I myself will be one of them – lie in the wrinkle of the cliff, which is behind the prison-gate looking over it, and up the valley. I know how to get to that hole unseen, for every crag is known to me. Also we two at the crafty minute can lower from the rocks the man who is to hide in the valley; if a man can be found bold enough. I have spoken to this young son of the West, because he is strong and nimble, a lover of Sûr Imar also, and a worshipper of womankind. But if his courage abide not with him to go down into the place of death, there is a young Lesghian of better courage ready to encounter it. But he is not well skilled in fire-arms. With wisdom have I spoken, as befits a son of Shamyl."

The danger thus foreseen by the veteran sharpshooter had long been in my thoughts. Our attack upon the rear of the enemy, far away from the dungeon gate, would avail the prisoners not a jot, and only cause their instant death, if the savage horde rushed at them first, as their leader would probably command. Some one must be there to face them, at the first signal of the fight: for the straight course of the glen (which resembled in shape a drawn-out horseshoe) was nearly a quarter of a mile in length, and our appearance at the further end would leave plenty of time to stab those inside. But one man hidden in the glen itself, and two upon the cliffs above, might check the rush for a minute or two, until our main force dashed up behind. Yet to have six rifles on the cliff, and six revolvers in the valley – how much more effectual would that be, as well as so much safer!

"Is there no room for more than one to lie concealed near the prison-gate, and for more than two upon the crag above?"

When the interpreter put my question, Usi shook his head, and turned his back upon me, as if he cared to hold no further converse with a craven. "I would go myself," he muttered, "if I had ever been taught to shoot with pipes that are no longer than the honeycomb."

"Hearken unto my words," I spoke in the style of his own oration, "O slayer of bears, the English heart hath as much endurance and contempt of peril, as ever was bred in the Lesghian or the untamed Svân. From this adventure I will not turn back, by reason of terror or the love of life. Do thou consider these things apart, while I hold counsel with the Captain of brave men."

Forty-two of us there were in all, without counting old Kobaduk or the fluent interpreter, – the one disabled by length of years, the other by prolixity of tongue. Time had failed us to muster more than twenty-two Caucasians, and eighteen British miners, with Strogue and myself to make up the force; but a match as we thought for twice that number of Ossets, or any other savage tribe. And we had the advantage of knowing much more about their proceedings than they could know of ours; for Usi (who had left us the day before to search his burned hut for the celebrated gun) had made the best of his time in other ways, skirting the highlands round the valley at a prudent distance, and learning from a goatherd's boy what the proceedings of the morrow were to be. All these things I put plainly before Strogue as the commander of the expedition, and he fell in at once with the Bear-slayer's plan; while Jack Nickols (as the best rifle-shot among us and a first-rate climber) volunteered to be Usi's partner in the dangerous enterprise among the cliffs. So we three, Nickols, Usi, and myself, made every preparation we could think of, and set off with a quick step right early, in advance of the main body.

In some of his tempers, Strogue was a very provoking and irritating fellow, and he knew it, I think; or he must have known it, whenever he looked at Bat Strogue in the glass. But now I thought more of him than I had ever thought before, because he behaved so kindly to me. For it must be remembered that I had not always put up with his brag, and his cynicism, and contempt, or pretended contempt of women, and many other little ways that rasp the quiet Briton.

"Let Jack Nickols go; don't you go, George," he said to me, I daresay a dozen times; "what matter if he gets a prod through the lungs? Take a lot of gabble out of him, if he ever came round again; if he didn't, one coxcomb the less. He does think Treble X of himself; while you are always so ready to learn, – it's a pleasure to hold a conversation with you. And when a man comes to know you, George, he finds you not half such a fool as he thought! That is my experience at any rate, although I have seen too much of men to pretend to know much about them. But nobody need look twice at you, to understand you thoroughly. I am wanted here of course; but let that cock-headed young Nickols go; nobody would ever miss him."

"Captain," I replied with emphasis, for I knew that he loved the title, – all the more perhaps as being of home-growth, – "should I be worthy of your friendship if I allowed a young fellow quite a stranger to the case to undertake my duty?"

"Well, well! God bless you! I shall never see you alive again. But I'll make a rare example of the fellow that runs you through, dear George. I wish I had bought a six-shooter in London; however, the Lord be with you. Be sure you kill four of them before you drop. That sham Hafer belongs to me, mind, after all the tricks he has played me."

This was not encouraging; but there seemed to be no way out of it. Neither was there any genuine pluck in my volunteering; for as a mere question of selfishness, Dariel's life was worth to me a hundredfold as much as mine. Another thing was, that I had never felt sure whether nature had afforded me a decent share of that British pith, and presence of mind, and calmness, of which the father reads in the despatch, and says, "Thank God we are not going down the hill yet!" while the mother's eyes run over, and the brother wonders whether he could do the like, if the pinch came to his own short ribs.

Some people declare that dreams will tell us, when we can remember them, what our genuine nature is. If so, I have been told both ways; in some visions, running like a niddering, in others standing firm as a pyramid. And now I found myself quite at a loss, although my mind felt firm enough, whether the body would toe the mark, stand steadfast, and act to orders.

Happily there was not much time for dealing with speculative terrors, for we had to keep on at a rapid pace, to do any good with our ambuscade. The sudden snowfall of the Sunday morning had not been so heavy on this northern side, but the track was very rough and crooked, as well as steep and slippery. So that Nickols and myself were ashamed to find the supple vigour of youth no match for the wiry endurance and practised precision of that ancient mountaineer. Then, at the crown of a terrible defile, he looked back, and ordered us to lie close, while he crept down a narrow channel flanked with trickling combs of snow.

We were glad to have a breathing time, and Nickols proposed a quiet smoke; but I would not hear of it, for the vaporous curls might be seen from below.

"Wonderful old buffer," Jack whispered with his hand to his mouth; "I believe he could out-walk us both. I shall take to bear's grease when I grow old. But I would like to shoot a match with him for his best bearskin, if the Amazon has not burned them all. By George, I shouldn't like to be that lady though, with the long pipe bearing upon me. Have you seen how his eyes flash and his lips twitch at the very name of that woman? I do believe he has arranged all this for his private satisfaction. But there goes the signal; we are to creep on carefully. Mind you don't send a stone down hill."

Taking our caps off, and stooping low so as not to jut out against the sky-line, we descended the shallow seam of rock, until we stood in a stony and briary hollow, as long and as wide as a sawpit. At the further end, brown Usi lay flat on his breast, and peered securely through a wattle of budding bush into the depth of the glen below. We joined him, and found ourselves in full command of the whole of the savage solemnity.

A heavy stone chair was planted near the middle of the valley, with a black tent just behind it. On either side about a dozen dirty but distinguished greybeards were squatting upon blocks of granite, wearing the sheepskin head-dress, and the smock with fluted cross-belt, and holding long white rods, as if in trial or in council. There was no one in the high chair as yet, but a young attendant stood on guard, smoothing now and then the pile of leopard-skin thrown over it. Further up the valley I could see a lot of Osset warriors, lounging in their usual way, some even squatting down and smoking, and scarcely any two dressed alike. Reckless fellows, and rough as wolves – it was difficult to count them; but at a guess I set them down as from eighty to a hundred, gallant men, no doubt, but looking better trained to rob than fight.

"Take it all in; shape it all to know every inch of it in your mind," Jack Nickols whispered kindly; "now is your time, George Cranleigh. It may save your life, when it comes to the rush. Did you ever see anything more lovely?"

"Very fine for the fellows who are safe up here," I answered less politely, and knowing (without advice of his) how much I had to think of.

But even in that nervous state, one could not behold without thinking about it, the strange way in which the hand of nature had cut and shaped and almost furnished a theatre of the mountains here. The sides of the glen were of yellow rock, or rather perhaps of a dun colour, nowhere less than a hundred feet in sheer height, or beetling over; while the level spread of the bottom was, like a frame drawn by a tapestry-worker, soft and rich and tissued smoothly, only of the brightest green, shot here and there with play of gold, like a carpet woven of lycopod. Usi said that the people told him snow would never lie down here, neither would any coarse weed grow, but only moss and the dews of heaven, for magnanimous heroes who slept below. And he said that the grey rocks, standing forth at the broad end we looked down upon, were tombstones, which had sprung like mushrooms where the Captains of those heroes lay.

"Imar and the lovely maiden," he said; as he struck his heel on rock, and Nickols told me what he meant, "are a hundred feet beneath us now. If you could drive an iron down, it would pierce the roof above their heads. But lo, one man has been slain already, condemned in the holy weeks and kept till now. A traitor, and an extortioner, by the black stake driven through him. The corpse is out of sight from the judgment yard, though I can see it plainly. By the dress he was of the Western races, such as you yourselves are; but a small man, weak, and of no account; perhaps an English slave purchased for his own use by Hisar.

"Now see, my son, where that horn of rock stands forth. When the wise men put their heads together, by this rope we will let thee down, if trembling cripple not thy strong limbs. The fighting men will not behold thee, because of the folding of the crag; the heads of men that are white with wisdom will be bowed into that of the wealthiest, while they whisper to one another death. And the woman will abide unseen within the tent. Therefore do thou quickly thus. As soon as thy feet are on the moss, cut the rope, stop not to untie it, fall on thy breast, and crawl into that hole – my finger shows it now – where slab of stone leans unto stone, and the body of a large heart may lie hidden. I saw it in the twilight before they caught me; but like a fool I went not in. Within twenty yards, thou wilt see the iron bars where Sûr Imar will be shackled to receive the death. Keep thy head below the brim, even as the salesman scrimps his bushel, and thine eyes as deep as his, when he seemeth to heed nothing. Thine own strong head and heart will guide thee, when it comes to stabbing. At the sight or the sound of thy downstroking we will shoot; and the Captain's force will rush up the valley. Bear in mind that thou hast chosen this; and death comes only once to man; and by the God on high, thou shalt be avenged on the wicked men that slay thee."

This ought to have been warm comfort to me, according to all great writers, and the general practice of mankind. But it failed to kindle one fibre of my system, and I dropped my eyes that the heartless slayer of many bears, and men thrice as many, might not behold the affliction in them which he would be sure to take amiss. It was not terror (I would wish to think), so much as pity for my father and dear mother, and Grace, and Harold, and the farm, and the horses, and the dogs I loved, and most of all for Dariel; also a good deal for myself, who went hand in hand with her in every thought of mine. But the less I thought and felt, the better; for the time was now to act.

We crept unseen to the spur of rock which Usi had called a "Horn;" and there they made the rope fast around my chest, and I passed a handkerchief round the breech of my revolver, and slung my kinjal and toorak securely, for I had taken kindly to that native weapon, made of the long horn of a mountain-goat, laden with lead, and bound with leather. Then at the proper moment when the judges or the jury – whichever they were – had gathered in a ring to consummate their farce, from the lip of the cliff I was let down softly, and lowered so skilfully in the buttress corner of a crag, that I reached the bottom with both feet ready, and only a little skin gone from my thumbs. There I cut the rope, and fell flat among the moss, which grew to the very plinth of cliff, and wormed my way, with the slab for a screen, until I dived into the hole at its base. Here I rubbed my knees, which had received a bruise or two, and began with great caution to survey the scene. For the little pit into which I had crawled was scarcely more than a yard in depth, but protected at the top by a smaller slab of stone, which rested with a wide slope against the upright rock, as the spur of a wooden fence is reared above the ground, and splayed against the post, to steady it.

At the lip of my refuge a grey plant grew with woolly leaves, something like mullein, and although it had not got much growth yet, it afforded me precious shelter, when I raised my head to peep around; for it partly closed the three-cornered gap, between the upright and the sloping stone. It is not in my power to make a list of all that I saw, being in so quick a terror; but the things that I was able to twist my neck to were enough to make me sorry for the colour of my hair.

In the butt-end of the cliff, which I had just dropped down, I beheld a wide door of dark metal, and the gleam of it was more of bronze than iron. What the metal truly was, no man would stop to ask himself, but rather stand in wonder, and be overcome by the solid mass and magnitude, and the strength of ancient times. All the sons of Caucasus might have come together, and done their very best for a century – if nature allowed them such length of strength – but even with the Genoese smiths to help them, they could never have built such a door as that. A door I call it, though I may be wrong; others would take it for a gate perhaps. But being all in one plane and flat, and having no frame in sight, to me it was a door, and a marvellous door, beyond our power to make or even to break open. On either side of it were two long loop-holes, like the lancet-windows in our church at home, but carved in the solid rock, too narrow for even a child to squeeze his little shoulders through. And I knew that in the chambers (quarried thus by Roman steel eighteen centuries ago), waiting for their doom, were the chief whom I admired, and the lady whom I loved.

There was nothing more to be made of that; not even a sign that Sûr Imar knew what the savages outside were doing. But as I thought of him, labouring for years, girding up the slack folds of a life, from which all the gladness of the world was gone, simply for the benefit of these wretches, – genuine indignation filled me, and I longed to shoot a tribe of them. This it was, and no true courage, which enabled me to regard the whole, with a calm heart and a solid head, like the oak, which is our emblem.

CHAPTER LV

AT THE BAR

How long those ragged elders carried on with their pretence of trial, is beyond my power to say. I only know that my joints began to stiffen with cramp, and to ache with crush, and my brain to hum like a factory wheel. Even the relief of descrying Usi or Jack Nickols, on the bristly brow of cliff a hundred feet over the dungeon-gate, was more than they dared to afford me now; though I tried to persuade myself once or twice that I espied the glint of metal there. Neither was there sound or sign of life within the rocky jail, so far as watchful eyes and ears could learn; while the cackle of the greybeards some fifty yards behind me resembled a drone of bagpipes enlivened by a cherry-clapper.

At last I beheld a stately woman advance from the cover of the private tent and take her seat in the chair of law, to receive the verdict of her puppets. Then some hypocritical farce ensued, as if she were shocked, and pleaded with them, and mourned to find them so inexorable. My heart burned within me, and my fingers tingled to pull trigger at some of them, such a fierce and dirty lot were they; but I said to myself, "Let Hisar come, the fellow that broke the lovebird's leg." Then as if the scene that could not be avoided was unfit for such gentle eyes, the Princess, with a bow of resignation, retired into the sable tent.

I lay close, and drew my head in, while four or five of the fighting men followed the hoary villain who had acted as chief-justice to the door of heavy metal sunk in the dark embrasure of the cliff. The old man drew forth a key as long as a toasting-fork and much bigger, and with brawny arms thrusting in both directions, and a screech as if from wounded rock, the valves of the door slid back into their bed, as the damper of a furnace slides. But one broad bar of metal spanned the opening horizontally, about five feet above the iron threshold. The Osset warriors stooped their white head-dresses under this heavy bar, and disappeared in the gloom inside. That they would not slay their prisoners there I knew, from Usi, and from Stepan's tales.

Presently they appeared again with a figure in the verge of sunlight, towering over their woolly gleam.

I saw Sûr Imar's noble face, as calm as when he smiled on me, and blessed me with his daughter. His hands were roped behind his back, his silvery curls uncovered, and his broad white chest laid naked; except that the red cross hung upon it, in which he wore some of his dead wife's hair. Two of the men stretched spears behind him, as if he would shrink from the steps of death; but he walked as if he were coming to welcome some expected visitor, bowed his head without a word, and laid his breast against the bar. There they cast a broad shackle round him and made it fast behind his back; while a pompous dotard stood forth the door, and read (or made believe read) the verdict of his brother idiots. As he finished, my pistol muzzle lay true upon the foremost of them; the man who first put hand to kinjal would never have put it to his mouth again.

Then to my surprise, they all withdrew, cackling in their crock-saw throats, while that old fiend showed his gums like a rat-trap, grinning through his rheumy scrub. And the sound of tongues up the valley ceased; and the blowing of horns, and the shrilling of fifes; and the only thing that I could hear was the slow beat of a sheepskin drum, to call the savages to the death, and the rapid thumps of my own heart.

Listening for the fatal step, I fixed my eyes once more upon the bound and helpless victim. Perhaps to reduce his well-known strength, or to lower his high courage, the affectionate sister had kept in his body just life enough to last till he should be killed. His ribs stood forth, and his cheeks were meagre, and the eyes looked worn and sunken; but there was not a sign of fear or flinching, no twitch or quiver in the smooth white forehead, and not so much as a palpitation in the broad breast laid against the bar. Like a fool I raised my hand a little and tried to attract his notice, but he kept his calm gaze towards his foes; until a low heart-broken wail from an inner cell of the caverned rock told of a sorrow beyond his own. Then for a moment he turned his head, and spoke some words of comfort perhaps, or of love and long farewell, to the one who could not come to him, or perhaps not even hear him; and I hoped in the Lord of mercy that she could not see her father. At the thought of that possibility even, hot as I was, my blood ran cold. Could any woman exist who would set such a sight before a woman?

Suddenly a glow of deep amazement shone in Imar's haggard eyes. With a wrench of his mighty frame he shook the steel bar like a ribbon, the shackles on his chest gave way a little, and his grand face issued from the gloom of granite into the testimony of the sun. Then the strong aspect and vivid lines – as firm as the cliff to confront their doom – relaxed and softened, and grew bright, as if memory forgot its age, and went back upon its years, to have a play with tender visions.