CHAPTER XXIV
IMAR'S TALE – PEACE
"Happiness appears to me to resemble the black eagle of the mountains more than the fair dove of the proverb. Restless and swift of wing, it flutters, scarcely long enough for a hover, over any home of ours, and even then too high for us to be sure that we have seen it. Not until it is gone, can we believe that it has been with us; and we know in our hearts that to look for it destroys the chance of seeing it.
"Shamyl was in a rage that Oria dared to pledge her faith to me, without consulting the 'Mountain-lion,' as his flatterers now called him. Whether he hoped to make money of her, or what other reason he may have had, I will not pretend to say. But when by means of my good service, and without the loss of a single man, he secured all those fair prizes, and thus recovered his favourite son, not to mention an excellent sum in cash, and good wives for some of his officers, the least he should have done in my opinion was to smile and pour his blessing upon the union of Oria and Imar. Instead of that, on the very day when the last of the Russian ladies left the lonely recesses of Darghi, he sent a score of his bodyguard, without even the courtesy of asking my consent, to escort the Princess Oria to his own headquarters.
"Bad breeding here made a great mistake, as it usually does among gentlemen. For if he had sent his orders to me, as the officer to whom he had intrusted the captives, I should have felt myself bound to obey him, however much against my liking. But being treated in this rough manner, which the Avar Chief was too fond of employing, I threw off at once my allegiance to him, – which was not that of a tribesman, and had been already encroached upon a little too uncouthly. For at present he was quite prosperous, and seemed well able to hold his own, – though the enemy had begun already their new plan of campaign, by which they prevailed in the end against him, – so that there could be no dishonour in leaving him with his glory. If the Russians had been pressing on him, I would not have quitted him; though nothing would have made me leave the Princess at his mercy. For when she confided herself to me, what things I said, and what vows I made, and what contempt I truly felt for every human being who thought lightly of such loftiness! Those officers who came with Shamyl's orders, were as faithful as could be to him; but ten times as many would not have availed to march my Oria eastwards.
"'This lady goes with me,' I said, 'she will be my wife in three days' time, just when you rejoin the camp. I will give you a letter to that effect to the inspired Commander. My men also will come with me; and if, as the General, he has any need of them hereafter, they will be at his service. You know that I do not speak in vain.'
"They all knew that, and many no doubt wished that they also were homeward bound. They went one way, and we the other; and the sons of gloomy Islam heard the songs of our rejoiceful faith borne back to them through the mountain passes, by the soft air from the west.
"For three or four years after that, I led a very peaceful life, happy in the perfect love of Oria, and the esteem of my faithful tribe. Being thoroughly versed in mountain war, we made ourselves respected by the badly armed and undisciplined races to the westward and the north of us. If they attempted an inroad, as their manner was, upon us, for their sakes we regretted it, but for our own were gratified. Because instead of plundering us of our honest crops and cattle, they always lost their thievish own; so that we grew very comfortable, and poverty was unknown among us. We sternly repressed all robbery, and to afford an abiding lesson to neighbours of lax principle, we deprived them of the means of outrage, placing these under our own control. At one time the numerous Osset tribes, far beyond Rukhan's rule, promised to join him in the plunder of our prosperity. But before they could mature their contradictory ideas, we passed with a chosen band through their only fruitful places, obtaining many specimens of things we cannot cultivate, and leaving them so much to talk of that they fell with one accord upon one another. So that they were compelled to send a humble petition to us for seed, as soon as the sun came back again.
"These little matters kept our arms from rusting, and our bodies from torpor. We injured no one who did not require it, and we taught them to abstain from injury. We encouraged literature in every village possessing two men who could read, and within ten miles of Karthlos Tower there were five or six poets growing. All this I mention not by way of vaunt, but to show how much can be accomplished, when the mind is easy.
"But alas before these great reforms had taken solid root with us, the final advance of the Russian forces hurried us to the war again. Shamyl, the gallant patriot, who had for a generation baffled the power of a boundless empire, was at last being crushed by weight of numbers, and worn out by perpetual blows. By forcing his scanty troops together, and closing the defiles around them, the stubborn invaders now had him in a grip, like a wolf blocked in his own den to starve. He called upon all who had shared his successes to help him in this last resource; and loth as I was to leave my happy home and peaceful villages, honour and good faith must not be starved by our prosperity.
"My sweet wife, who had never admired the great Captain as the Russian ladies did, prayed and wept and coaxed in vain; she brought my two children, the boy and the girl, to show me that I ought to think of more than mere abstractions. Innocent flesh of my own flesh, and tender bone of my own bone, and eyes more bright than any star in all the sky of glory, what had the 'Wolf of the mountains' done to make me love him more than these? I stood at the gate with my arm around her trembling form; and my beautiful boy, just three years old, clung to my leg and kissed my knee, and the little baby always wise, who now has come to be Dariel, looked at me through her mother's hair, with the sparkle of the brighter world babes come from still unquenched by earth. What was pride to me, or glory, if I could not find them here? But love has never yet sufficed to keep a man contented. He grows ashamed of living in it; and his manhood argues that if he lets his darlings wrap it all in warmth and softness, it will soon cease to be worth their care. I put my wife and children by, with a prayer to the Lord to protect them, and went to do my duty.
"How often I looked back, and thought – as all I loved grew further off – that a man's first duty is to those who cannot live without him. Moreover, that I should be punished for casting eyes upon and longing for stirring rather than steadfast life. Badly begun, and sadly ended, was to be the rule of it. At the outset thus our little band (familiar as they once had been with every twist of the mountain-chain and every tangle of the gorges) had managed, by living in peace so long, to get their memories confused. And even when they hit upon the way, they found it stopped by Cossack outposts at the very points that we used to guard. But after many a climb and crawl, we contrived to rejoin the brave Imaum.
"I was admitted to him at once, and saw by the weariness of his eyes, and the looseness of his attitude, that he knew it was all over. He was sitting at a table with the lamp behind him, and his shaggy head thrown backward, so that the light played down the furrows of his heavy forehead, as from below one sees the moon glistening down a wrinkled steep. With his usual scorn of ceremony he did not rise, but grasped my hand.
"'Imar, thou art a man,' he said, with his guttural voice, such as all the Avars have, now a little tremulous. 'If all had been as true as thou, I should not look like this to-night. It is Russian gold that has conquered us. To-morrow I surrender.'
"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.'"