"There was also another signature, broken and crooked, as if the hand had been seized in another, and compelled to shape the name of Marva. Then I hoped that my sister had not turned against me in her heart, though constrained by her fierce and wicked husband; and I ordered the messenger to wait, and fed him with dainties that he knew not how to handle, while I preserved my temper even against the insult of that address. For now I was entitled to be addressed as Sûr, of which we think more than the common word Prince; for it is a designation of warlike rank, imported from the furthest Orient, and ascribed to none but a Chief who has led his tribe into battle with a foreign foe. Scorning to show anger, I wrote thus —
"'Accursed murderer of my father, and serpent robber of my sister. Thou hast piled up a mountain of lies, so vast, and of such deadly blackness, that the snow of thy guile cannot cover them. A man of lower rank than mine may descend into the filth where thou grovellest, and strive to vie with thee in vermin. But I will leave thee to the Lord, who heedeth the smallest thing that He hath deigned to make. Yet that my sister be not a widow, one thing I will say to thee. Let not the right bank of the Terek be tainted by thine evil-smelling body. Lest, for the sake of those whom the Heaven valueth, it be plunged into the bottomless bog. For verily there are foul reeks of Satan, sent by his malice to corrupt the air.'
"Now this was not intended as an offering of peace – though many people took it altogether in that light, not from the moderation of the language only, but because I sent not the wonted double dagger with it – but simply as an overture of justice, in language not too mealy, and an opening for reconciliation. For Marva, my sister, I felt many pangs, a hankering which I endeavoured to repress, a tenderness of the younger days, when neither could have the skin broken without a burst of tears from the other's eyes. But we have to get harder as we go on, and the hold of soft love on our little thumbs grows slacker; and even sweet twins (who have tumbled into one another's arms, and rolled over with rollicking, till no one could tell which was which of them) must begin to close palm, and even shut fist, to the kisses of each other. And with all this affection heavy on my mind, and a good guard left upon the steeps of Karthlos, I returned for the summer to Shamyl."
CHAPTER XXIII
IMAR'S TALE – LOVE
"Perhaps you have gathered from my words already some idea of the character of Shamyl. An idea, and not a perception, was all that his dearest friends could have of him, because he had no dear friends at all. And yet he was a man of warm nature, and kept nobody at a distance from him; neither was there any haughtiness, though abundance of rudeness, about him. Men put up with the latter, and even like it (when shown to their friends) and talk pleasantly about it, and the little ruffle passes over, every one expecting that his friend will be the next to get it. But cold universal arrogance makes the greatest of mankind – if such can show it – universally detested.
"I believe that Shamyl was by nature kind, – though he did some abominably brutal things, – and that if he had not taken into his head, or had it put there by flatterers, that Allah had breathed into him the breath of Mohammed, he would have been one of the noblest, as well as the purest perhaps, of patriots. Peace be with him, for he was at least sincere, which cannot be said of all leading minds, and he understood other men at a glance, though he may not have looked very much into his own man.
"I fear that it may be ungrateful on my part not to speak even more highly of him. For he took a great liking to me in his way, although I was not of his creed; neither did I pretend to any personal hatred of the Russians, who are generally very kind of nature, – more so perhaps than we are, – and only did their duty in shooting us straightforwardly. Neither did I pretend to any special love of him, but carried out his orders as a soldier should, unless they were worse than even war demands, in which case I told him to seek elsewhere. Therefore I was surprised, as much as any man acquainted with him could be surprised, when he took me aside one day and said: 'Sûr Imar, I have an important mission for thee, which I would intrust to no other. Many of my officers are rough and wild, and have no command over themselves with women. My son is a prisoner with the Russians; and I have a noble scheme for recovering him, and perhaps a hundred thousand crowns to boot. But it is a dangerous enterprise, and must be carried out with proper delicacy to ladies.'
"This was a very high compliment to me, being still a young man in the fervour of my days; but the Captain had heard of stern actions of mine, when some of his men had shown rudeness to those who could not take up arms to protect themselves.
"'Thou hast the best horse in the army,' he continued, with his deep eyes fixed upon my glowing cheeks, as the spirit of adventure began to rise, 'and there is not a stronger man among us, neither one to surpass thee in activity. All this will be needed, and boldness too, tempered with skill and discretion. I would go myself, for the work is worthy of me, but I cannot leave the camp just now. My design is to carry off from their summer encampment all the ladies of the Russian and the Georgian Court. Not a hair of their heads shall be harmed, and we will treat them as princesses, but hold them for the ransom of my dear son, and a good round sum for the military chest. The Powers of the West have been stingy to us, when we might have done them excellent service; but we will make the Russian bear supply a little grease for our bullets; for the ladies are of the highest rank. But the whole scheme fails, if even one of them should be ill-treated.'
"This was the only point about which I felt uneasiness; but he gave me permission, and even clear orders, to shoot on the spot any man who misbehaved. And when he allowed me to take fifty of my tribe, as well as fifty chosen men of his, my only anxiety was to start as soon as arrangements could be made, and before any rumour of our plans should get abroad. For I knew all those southern stretches of the mountains well, and that perhaps induced him to appoint me in command.
"He told me that trusty friends near the Georgian capital had informed him that the early summer heat had made the city in the deep hollow by the river almost unbearable for ladies of the north; and therefore the wives and daughters of the principal Russian officers, together with the noblest of the Georgian women, had been sent to a cooler spot among the hills in the healthy district of Kahiti, celebrated for its vineyards. Little expecting any danger there so far from the Lesghian outposts, they were lodged in a pleasant place under canvas, guarded by a scanty detachment of Cossacks, most of whom had been invalided from the war. Pounce upon them suddenly, and what could they do but scream? Even this they would not do very long, according to Shamyl's opinion, but soon be happy when they found themselves made much of, and enjoy the romance of the situation, and the high price put upon them. This prediction, to my surprise, proved wonderfully correct; for many of the younger ladies permanently added to the beauty of our country and the quality of its inhabitants; while those who preferred restoration declared that they would have no higgling about them, – if their husbands attempted to cheapen their price, let them even remain among the gallant men who put them at a higher figure. But this is a later matter, and I only mention it to show the good feeling we created.
"Litters, and light carts, and other conveyances were sent in advance of us over the worst places, with orders to wait in a valley we described; and with all the best horses we could procure, we set forth at sunrise one summer morning, so as to traverse the most dangerous part of the journey in good daylight. We rode very leisurely to keep our horses fresh, until in the afternoon of the second day, we halted in a hollow of the lower mountains to make a good meal, and learn more exactly where the encampment of the ladies was. Here were a hundred of us, all good horsemen, and accustomed to despise the enemy, – not for want of courage, but for want of wit. In courage they were quite our equals, for they never seemed to care much about their lives; but when briskness and readiness turned the issue, the vigour of the free man could upset the bulk of serfs. This we had proved a hundred times against the weight of numbers.
"Being in command of this dainty enterprise, and having to prove that I was not too young, which always puts a youth upon his very finest mettle, I took all the precautions of an old commander. Ordering all the others to keep close, and having only Stepan and the best of our guides with me, I proceeded very carefully afoot along the course of a stream from the hills, which had worn a deep channel. We knew where the ladies ought to be; and though a man must not rely too much on that, sure enough there they were by the dozen. Their encampment was pitched upon a very pretty knoll, not more than a long eyeshot from the nearest bend of the watercourse we crouched in. I put my red plume between my knees, and watched them, being surprised at the beauty of their dress, and the far greater beauty of their figures. The proudest radiance of the Russian Court was there, and the softer charms of Georgia; and I was glad not to see those lovely faces, which it would be my duty to bedew with tears so soon.
"Having counted their tents, three of which were royal, and made myself sure of their position, I left all those beauties at their tea outside, with the sunset casting their shadows down the slope, and saying to myself, 'Where will you have your breakfasts, Mesdames?' stole back with my two comrades, to make ready for this prize. Stepan, who was always full of strong ideas, and never confined them to himself, did his utmost to convince me that the wisest plan was to let all these houris go snugly to bed, and then catch them up as they were in their first slumber, and whirl them away on our saddles. But I could not bear to think of this outrage on their modesty; and one figure in a silver pink dress was in my mind, – the youngest and the loveliest of all I had descried. Therefore I made ready to descend upon these ladies before they should begin to retire for the night, which they would not do until they had supped well and probably played their games of cards.
"We had little fear of sentries, for there were not more than a dozen, and no sign of any horse-patrol about; and even of the few fellows lounging round the tents, and ordered to keep at a proper distance from them, we got rid by the old device of sending a boy on a donkey with a flagon of vodka on either side. They showed their alacrity by robbing him of these, and then retiring to their hut, with the officer on duty to take first pull. When the moon was up, and we rode softly over the sod of alluvial ground, the only challenge we received was the screech of a Russian drinking-chorus round the corner of the trees. Without firing a shot, or disturbing a dog, we surrounded the camp of the fair ones, and called upon them to surrender. At the same time we entreated them to prepare in silence for their departure with us, if they valued the lives of their guardians.
"This exhortation was of no effect. Amazement and terror quite overcame their natural discretion, and we found it impossible to parley with them. So great was the outcry that we stood aghast, till those faithful Cossacks came running, or rather staggering to the rescue, which restored our power of action. We bound them in couples to convenient trees with some ropes we had brought for the purpose; and then as the ladies still declined to join us, we wrapped all the most important of them in their cloaks, and placed them on our horses. In this they assisted us to some extent, by kindly disclosing the rank of each other. Thus we obtained all who were of any value from a financial point of view, twenty-two of sterling substance; and at their entreaty and assurance of amendment we took a domestic for each of them, and turned our horses' heads towards the glen where the vehicles awaited us.
"My instructions were to leave no room for doubt as to our possession of six Princesses, whose names I will not give, because most of them, I trust, are still alive, and none the worse for their captivity. Enough that they were of exalted rank, and in command – as the Russian ladies contrive to be – of the Commanders of the army opposed to us. Therefore, before we started, I stood upon the terrace in front of the tents, with our horses pawing the turf, which was almost a novel treat to them, and the white moon making a picture of us. And there with great deference and courtesy, I called over from the list provided me the names of their incomparable Highnesses, the Princess O – , and the Princess D – , &c.; and each of them made answer according to temperament, and sense of resignation to the will of Heaven. Then I gave the word to start, and remained the last, to bring up the rear as in duty I was bound.
"But suddenly a slender and timid figure came gliding, as if in the haste of despair, from the shadow of a tent, and stood close to me. It was the lovely maiden in the silver-pink attire, and she drew her veil partly aside, and glanced in the clear moonlight at my face, and then dropped her dark eyes, and then lifted them again with quivering tears like a suppliant – 'Oh, Captain, am I to be left behind?'
"'Lady, have no fear,' I said very gently, and half afraid to look again at her; 'you shall not be left unguarded. But tell me who you are, the fairest and the youngest of so many.'
"'Alas, sir, I am not worth money now,' she answered with her white hands clasped together; 'there is none of my race to pay ransom now. There is not even a wealthy friend, to help, or to shelter Oria.'
"'The Princess Oria, the lily-bud of Kajori, the last of the Royal House of Georgia, to which the race of Rurik is a mushroom! Princess Oria, I do you homage.'
"As I made her a low salute, which I would not have offered to the Czar himself, she turned away as if she would not see it, and a soft sob made me feel afraid. This was not one of your haughty mesdames, who let the men fancy that they carry them by storm, while they laugh in their own proud breasts, with knowledge that they are the Masters, as soon as they like. I could hear the Princess D. in the distance, rating the man who carried her on the cushion provided in front of him, and I knew that he had a bad time of it.
"'What are the commands of your Royal Highness?' I asked, with an emphasis on the title, which she alone of the proud bevy could claim. 'Behold, I am proud to be your slave.'
"She rose to the remembrance of her childhood, when she had been made much of, as the last descendant of Queen Tamara; and then her pride melted into a flood of tears, and the sense of helpless maidenhood. She tried to say something, but it only came to sobs.
"'Trust yourself to me,' I said, 'I cannot leave you here at the mercy of drunken Cossacks. I am Sûr Imar of the Lesghians, not a Moslem, but a Christian. By the body of Christ, none shall harm you, while I live.'
"There was no time for further adjurations. She bowed her beautiful head, and drew down her long veil, and in a moment the love of my life was in my arms, and on the soft pillow in front of me, with my horse at full gallop, in the broad stretch of the moon. Like an image of marble she lay before me, and I touched her as if she were an image of glass. The troopers were astonished when we overtook them, but they knew better than to say a word, or down they would have gone, Russian Princess and all. For I was not in the cue to stand insolence. Having given my orders I kept in the rear, grudging even the moon between the bars of shadow a glimpse at the figure in my precious trust. But no man can think of such things, and then tell them. For, they only come once in the nightmare of life.
"Shamyl was delighted, when we brought him his fair prisoners, and he did his very best in his peasant style to be courteous and polite to them. As the leader of the expedition I had the privilege of introducing them; and it was really a fine thing to see how they behaved to him, and he to them. He gave himself airs which made me smile; and before so much rank and beauty – infidel though it might be – he forgot for the moment that he was the Prophet of the Lord. And as for the ladies, although they were bound in consistency to abhor him, not only did they forego the attempt, but all who had rank to make such a claim decent, insisted upon having a lock of his hair.
"In a word, the Princesses were all so happy, when by means of a flag of truce they had received from their friends a large supply of raiment and other luxuries, that the hope of getting a first-rate figure for them was endangered. Instead of frantic adjurations, and despairing outcries, their letters now were full of bright descriptions and gay narratives; and proud as we were of their good opinions, we could not afford them to that extent. It became needful on this behalf to send the fair captives to a duller place, to some desolate spot, where even a woman could not contrive to see much of the world. Darghi, in the depths of Daghestan, and far away even from the echoes, was a place of so lofty a character that the fashions of the Ark were as valid as the latest announced from Paris; and thither I was ordered to conduct these ladies, for the creation of discontent among them, the scenery being beautiful, but sparsely populated. And if the love of Nature were by any means as potent in the Russian breast as the English ladies now declare it to have grown in theirs, perfect happiness should have been the lot of these fair Princesses. There was nothing to disturb them, beauty reigned on every side; and beauty should have reigned within.
"But alas that human nature never, at least in its feminine state and form, finds satisfaction in the outward type! Among the rugged mountains, and with frequent shift, and much discomfort, these fair creatures had been bright, and cheerful, and perilously amiable. A flag on a rock, or a drum at the corner, or the flash of a helmet in the hollow, was enough to send their active minds into fifty pleasant flutters. But here they had no stir of war, no delightful dreads to rouse them, only the depths of lonely peace, and the repose, for which they had so often sighed. For a day or two, they tried to enjoy it, and spoke of the pleasures of their childhood, and roved about in cotton jackets as if they were longing to be peasants. Our duty was to defend them only, and never interfere with them, so long as they kept within certain bounds; and we gave them no cause to complain of us; but endeavoured to do our duty well, as sentries of so many money-bags.
"Strange as it must appear, there was nothing that irritated them more than this. They could not bear to be regarded in that light, and being too proud to come out of it themselves, what did they do but send their maids – they may not have meant it, but so it came to pass – to produce a flirtation among my men. Precautions had been taken (as we thought) against any process of that sort, by detailing for this custody only grizzled veterans, who had wives at home, and could not understand a single word of Russian. But this, though a step in the right direction, did not go quite far enough; and several of our villagers beyond the prime of life behaved in a manner more appropriate to their sons. So that I found myself compelled, in the proper discharge of my office, to use increasing diligence from day to day. For one of the Russian ladies, being the mother of two little girls, had obtained permission to bring her favourite French governess, as lively a girl as ever lived, and acquainted with half-a-dozen languages. This Mademoiselle de J – , – for I will show her the same consideration as her wealthier comrades, – was perpetually forming little plots of the wildest and most romantic kind, for the escape of all the captive band. With a view to that, she took upon herself to inspect me closely, every time I came to a little gate, newly put across the pass, by my special orders, which had created much offence inside. There was no other way, by which these ladies, who now placed every confidence in me, could manage to get away at all, without perpendicular motion; unless it were the narrow winding passage leading into a sombre wood, and there I had 'Wolves!' painted up in great Russian capitals, so that few feminine eyes had the courage even to look at the signboard. And this is how it should be with them. For we do not wish them to be like us.
"I was trying to get out of that condition of the mind, into which I had been cast by a very few words, and still fewer glances from that lovely Princess Oria, whom I remembered as a very little maiden leading some procession, when I was a lad at Tiflis. If ever any boy has any heart to lose, when it ought to be gone upon play and mischief, mine had taken a sally out of me at sight of that young darling, trying to walk in a stately manner as she had been instructed, and resolute to bring her soft innocent self to the stiffness of the great occasion. How I had longed to lift her up among them and shout – 'This is your Queen, if you had a spark of courage. Behold the pink eagle on her shoulder!'
"But now it was a very different thing. The duty of an officer in trust was laid upon me, and if the men of Georgia would not stand up for their race, what had any outer tribe to do with it? The main point before me was to conquer foolish yearnings, and behave as a figure made of steel and leather. And without the interference of that glittering little governess, the rapture and the anguish of my life would not have been.
"I came down the narrow pass one evening towards dusk, to see to the posting of the sentinels, and to receive any message from the ladies, concerning their welfare and their general ideas; for they were beginning to write very craving letters and entreaties that would move a heart of stone, to husbands and fathers who were made of money, to rescue them from this seclusion. All these we forwarded, and Shamyl calculated that every letter would be worth to us a thousand roubles on the average. But money was not in my thoughts at all, and even the sense of duty fled, when I saw through the bars not the French woman only, but a figure very closely veiled, and endeavouring not to be seen in the twilight of a rock.
"'Poor little soul! She will die, she will die;' said the lady from Paris, with a very light sigh, as if with the thought that we must all do that. 'Those fat Princesses, what is it then? They are punishing her to the death. Poor little one! But why do I speak to Monsieur the Commander? Monsieur the Commander will rejoice in that occurrence, because the poor little one is not endowed with gold. Alas, it is so everywhere, except in France!'
"'Young lady, allow me to enter. It is my place to see to the safety of you all. I have not entered after sundown hitherto. But stand aside, lady, or you may be harmed.'
"She saw that I would break the gate open at a thrust, – for we allowed them to lock themselves in at night. 'Monsieur the Commander, how imperious he is!' she exclaimed with a wicked smile, as she turned the key. I thanked her, and then put my arm across the passage as the other young lady seemed about to fly. 'Pardon, fair Princess, but I cannot have it thus,' I said, with an attempt to look official; 'I am not your warder only, but your guardian. You trusted yourself to my care that night. A thousand Shamyls shall not take you from me. Can you not trust yourself to me again? Have I given you reason to regret it? I have longed to be with you every moment; but have I ever dared to approach you?' I spoke in her native language, which was very delightful to her ears after so much Russian.
"'Speak then with good courage, thou silly child. Tell the brave Commander all the insults piled upon thee by the proud and fat Princesses. Alas, good Heaven, there they are calling me again! Who would not think that I was born to be their slave? Brave Commander, the time is now for thee.' With these words away ran Mademoiselle de J – .
"Then Oria spoke, without shrinking from me, and her voice was as clear as the melody of a river when the Winter has released it, and the Spring is on its banks.
"'Sûr Imar, thou hast been very good to me. If I placed no confidence in such a kind defender, never could I hope to be defended any more. But now I am safe among all these great ladies; I am not one of those who shriek at every shadow.'
"'To that I can bear witness,' I answered very softly, to remind her of the night when she lay upon my horse; 'but what can I do, if the Princess will not trust me?'
"At this gentle reproach all her generous nature sprang forth, like the sun in a tempest. She threw aside her veil, and came close to me, and was not afraid to fix her eyes on mine. 'Sûr Imar, is that faith enough?' she asked, as she gave me her soft hand long enough to last for many an hour of dreaming. 'It is all I can ask for the present,' I replied, and she turned away her face, but not her form.
"Fearing to bring her into contumely among her proud companions, whose voices we could hear not far away, I retired from the gate with the proper martial tread; but not before I had obtained her promise to meet me on the morrow at the foot of the winding passage into the black wood; but she was not to venture up the path, until she saw me there; for truly there had been a wolf prowling near it, according to the children of the peasants. Therefore I had taken care to keep our golden ladies from risking ten thousand good crowns perhaps apiece to the cause of freedom (which they were ready to embrace, as soon as they knew both sides of it), by venturing into those gaunt and lonely shadows, where no man could hear them while being devoured.
"In this assurance I had every hope of treating confidentially the position of the Princess Oria; and if that desirable wolf would only form number three at the interview, who could say what might come of it? But even his youngest cub, if he had any, might have regarded me with contempt, if he had seen the condition I was in, while waiting for the footstep of my love; for they look at such matters in a less submissive way.
"Unworthy as I was of the joy I then attained, even the pleasure of remembering it would be justly taken from me, if I lowered it by any ordinary words. For any one else it seems enough to know that after some talk of affairs in general, and trifles we pretended to be full of, my beauty, my darling, my gift from Heaven, my own and my only love confessed – that I was as much to her as she could be to me."
* * * * * * * * * *
At this point, the Lesghian Prince became unable to proceed with his narrative. I felt that I should have been ten times worse, if I had won and then lost his daughter. So I grasped his strong hand, which was trembling not a little, and hoping that soft memories might subside to gentle sympathies, departed with my love for him increased, and my reverence not diminished. When I saw him next, he had gathered up his courage, and was a little ashamed of his own breakdown. And he tried to tell the rest of his sad story, as if it were the sorrow of a cousin or a comrade.