CHAPTER XLVII
WOLF'S MEAT
Thus far Cator, the attorney's clerk, had proved himself the most sagacious and quick-witted of our party; though Captain Strogue would have been amazed and indignant to hear me say so. And now, when we had rejoined the rest of our little expedition, and all were recruiting the inner man (or the middle man perhaps he is, body being first, stomach second, and mind – when found, third portion), that sprig of the law came up, with a bone between his teeth, and begged the Captain and myself, who were feeding from the outside tops of our hats, to go a little further round the elbow of a crag. There he asked us what opinions we had formed; and when we had taken our seats, we said: "None at all; except that we are all bamboozled."
"No doubt about that. But how, and why?" He answered with a mysterious look, which we were inclined to smile at, not having known him long enough to be sure of his prophetic gifts. "A lot of things have occurred to me, which may be very absurd of course, and it is not likely that all are right; but I am pretty sure that some are. Shall I tell you, and hear what you think of them?" We lit our pipes, and nodded to him, and smiled at one another.
"To begin with, then, I suspect most strongly that her Majesty, the Devil's wife, for so she deserves at least to be, has got her brother under lock and key somewhere, snug enough, and at her mercy, if she owns such a quality. Did you see what she touched, when she went to gag, and at the same time to cram, that poor young fellow, whose will she has crushed out of him by years and years of bullying? Perhaps you could not see where you stood; and she did not think that I could. But I saw the tips of her long fingers playing with a key which was in her belt – a mere household key of course – but enough to remind her unlucky son where his poor Uncle was, without much chance of ever coming forth, but in his coffin. And I caught a glance of his which proved that he understood her meaning, and might soon have the same thing for himself. And then you saw how he broke down; for he is a very tender-hearted youth."
"By Jove, it sounds uncommonly like it; I was so taken aback," said Strogue, "at seeing another Prince Hafer in the field, and so different from my Simon Pure, that I could not notice small things much; and perhaps it was the same with Cranleigh. There is some abominable villany at work, and we shall be too late to stop it. I would like to insure friend Imar's life for ten thousand at five thousand premium. Go on, my son, thou speakest well."
"Another thing, according to my lights. He is not in that queer old place at all, Gomorrah Castle, or whatever they call it, although there are plenty of black holes there, enough to starve a regiment man by man. No, he is away to the North at present, perhaps on the other side of the mountains. You saw the big window that faced the North, more like a door than a window it was. Well, every time her brother was in question, and especially when she was fingering that key, she gave a quick glance through that window, very likely without even knowing it. People who gesticulate much often follow it up in that way. When they speak of a distant thing, they glance in that direction, if they can see it, or anything anywhere near it; and there was a great double-peaked mountain covered with snow, like a white mitre, stuck against the sky in the North. And if her brother had been in the castle dungeons, she would have made us go down the front ladder again, instead of getting a wink of back premises."
"Upon my word, this boy is wide-awake, considering how little he has seen yet of the world. Cator, like Cato, thou reasonest well. Go ahead, my son, we hearken thee."
"You see, Captain," said the young man, feeling abashed in the presence of such renown, and doubtful about some chaff in its palm; "you see, I should never care to offer you advice. It might be in place with Mr. Cranleigh here, because he is only a young beginner. But you know what's what, I should say, ever so much better than I do. But as you tell me to go on, I will. Her Serene Highness intends to make away with her twin-brother, on Monday next."
"Come now, come now! I can stand a great deal, Cator. And none of your butter-Scotch – no, you are a Shropshire man, you say. Whatever you are, it won't make that go down. Why, Old Moore, and Zadkiel would be nothing to you."
"Captain, I will tell you what I go by, and then you'll be able to judge for yourself, whether I talk bunkum, or good sense. I have been in these parts for a twelvemonth now, and I ought to know something of these blessed natives. There are no two lots of them quite alike, any more than two mountains or two valleys are. But there is not a pin to choose among them in the matter of laziness. Poor beggars, they can scarcely help that, I dare say, frozen as they are for half the year, and roasted for the other half. Well, about here the manner is to keep three holidays, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, just as if they did anything on the other four days. These Ossets about here have no religion of any sort worth speaking of. Some call themselves Christians, some Mahometans, many are simple idolaters; but all are full of superstition, as such people must be. All they do in the religious way, is to stick to their fasts and festivals, particularly the festivals. And their great festival of the year finishes up next Sunday."
"What the deuce has that got to do with it?" Strogue enquired impatiently, for the sun was beginning to slope along the valley, and we had ten miles to go to the next covered place.
"Everything, if you will hear me out. That festival goes on for three weeks; and during that time it is not lawful to follow up even the blood-feud. But on Monday, it will be the proper thing to stick and stab all who are waiting for it. And what makes me think that this little game is on, according to institution, is that we have not seen a living soul, except an old woman and a child or two, in the miserable villages we have come by. Why? For the very simple reason that every noble savage who can swing a dagger is off for this great act of faith on Monday; to see the death of the head of the clan avenged."
"I won't believe a word of it," I exclaimed, meaning no rudeness of course to Cator, but scouting the possibility of such fiendish abominations, after all I had heard of the great man's lofty hopes and pure ideals.
"To me it seems likely enough," said Strogue. "I have been among fellows who would eat their mothers, and serve up their own babies for a garnish. We have none of that sort to deal with here; and the men of these mountains, taking them all round, are an indolent rather than a cruel lot. Quarrelsome of course, and hot of blood, but most loyal to their chiefs, and very generous sometimes. It is the blood-feud that makes devils of them; but how can they help that? It is their test of honour, ever since they came out of the Ark with the raven. What we have got to do is to act exactly as if all our friend Cator suggests were the fact. Thursday to-day; there is little time to lose, even if we can catch it up at all. We shall want every son of an emerald of you; and you must fight like sons of the Emerald Isle. By Jove, what a ripping turn-up it will be! Right about face, quick march for Kazbek!"
It was all very well for him, and Cator, and the rest to take things lightly thus. They could not be expected to feel much concern for the Lesghian Chief, or a Lesghian lady even more adorable. And as for Strogue his main object was less to rescue Sûr Imar, than to wreak his own vengeance upon Hafer – that is to say the London Hafer, the one who had leaped the ivied wall, and shot at me, and robbed the Captain, by some blackleg's process, of £300.
But I (with my warm affection and deep pity for the father, and passionate love of the daughter) could see no adventurous joy or fierce delight in the issue impending. I wanted no revenge, no compensation for anything done against me. Hafer the genuine, and Hafer the counterfeit, might settle their claims to the title as they pleased; even that most malignant and awful woman – if she were as black as she was painted – the Princess Marva might live her life out, and give the best account of it when her time came; if only she could be kept from harming her relatives so innocent. There must be in her motives something more than we could see. Revenge alone for the loss of a husband, with whom she had lived on the worst of terms, and who had wronged her on the tenderest point – that, and the time-worn grievance about the refusal of her marriage-portion were not enough to drive her to such a horrible and unnatural deed as – unless we wronged her most shamefully – she was now in cold blood designing. There must be some other strong motive too, some great temptation of self-interest, some of that stern, sour stuff which drives us out of the hive that should be sweet to us.
No man knows what he does or thinks (unless he can keep himself separate from the thoughts of all around him, which requires a wonderful nature) when his legs go along with the legs of other men, and he has to swing his arms accordingly. There was no sort of march among us; for we had never been even of the Volunteer Force (except myself, and that only made me critical, without any help in it), and if we had wanted to show the Caucasus any sense of drill, we could never have done it, even if we had known how. By order of the rocky way, or of rocks without any way among them, we could never march two abreast, or even three in file with decency. All we could do was to get along, and admire one another's clumsiness.
Then we came to a place with a sudden gap in front, and nothing but the sky beyond it. A cleft in the crown of a rugged ascent, with spires of black rocks right and left. And there on the saddle-ridge that we must pass, a gaunt and wondrous figure arose, whether of man or of beast, and wavered against the grey mist of the distance, and swayed. Two long arms, like a gallows out of gear, or a cross that has rotted with its weight, struck up; and having been severely tried already we were much at a loss what to make of it. There was good light still, and we were not to be frightened, as we must have been after sunset; but the Interpreter being always nervous turned round, and exclaimed: "She has sent the Devil, the Devil himself, to stop us." While he spoke the long figure fell down on its knees, and swung its lank arms, like a windmill.
"Hold hard! Don't fire!" Strogue shouted sternly, as some of our men had brought their guns to bear. "Idiots, it is nothing but a poor lost man, a fellow without a bit of food inside him. George, let us go and see what he is up to."
I was ready to go anywhere and do anything in my present state of mind; and when we came up to him, our poor brother mortal fell upon his face, and put his hands upon our feet. He muttered some words which we could not understand, and then he opened his mouth, which was very large, and pointed down it intelligibly to the slowest comprehension.
"He may be the Devil, but he wants some grub," Strogue shouted back to our company, who were still looking towards us doubtfully, for people become superstitious, without intending it, in these wild places. Then Cator came up, with a barley-cake in one hand and his rifle in the other. The unfortunate starver took no heed of the weapon in his extremity, but stretched his shrivelled arm across the muzzle, and tore the cake from Cator. In a moment it was gone, almost without a munch; and then he stared at us, with sun-scorched eyes projecting from their peel like a boiled potato, – and groaned for more, crooking his fingers like prongs of a rake. We shrank from him so that he might not touch us. But for the blood he was covered with we should have taken him for a skeleton; and but for his groans and nakedness we should have passed him as a scarecrow.
"Don't be in such a hurry, old chap, or you'll do yourself more harm than good," Strogue suggested reasonably. But even if the other had understood, it would have made no difference. He spread his face out in such a manner that there was nothing left but mouth; as a young cuckoo in a sparrow's nest, when his stepmother cannot satisfy him, squattles his empty body down, and distends himself into one enormous gape. Then Tommy Williams came up laughing, with his hat full of broken victuals; and the Captain, who understood the subject, said: "Not too fast, or he'll fall to pieces. And pour down a little whiskey to soften it."
When the poor fellow came round a little – and flat enough he had been before – to our surprise he proved himself an exceedingly brave and well-intentioned man. In fact, if he had been otherwise we should never have found him there. A barbarian he appeared at first, but that was appearance only, and under the stress of misfortune, although he belonged to a race which is the most barbarous of the Caucasus. When through our nervous interpreter we began to understand him, we soon perceived that it was our good luck as well as his own, which had brought him to us. And much as at first we grudged the time expended in this humanity, we soon came to see that it had been well spent, even for our own purposes. After such a fast, and then such feasting (prolonged in even more than due redress), it would have been most unfair to expect many words from him prematurely. We clothed him a little, for he was stark naked, – and so hairy a person I never beheld, – and then we cut the tight cord knotted round his waist, from which even famine had not freed him; and then we made a litter – for he could not walk – and carried him to our night-quarters. Luckily there was no foe in search of us, or that miserable sufferer's groans and snores must have told our whereabout to every echo. He surprised us again by an eager call for supper, but none would we give him, until he had splashed for a quarter of an hour in the glacier stream. Then we fed him again, and clothed him fairly, and a decent and reputable man he looked, though going down the vale of years. And his tale was interpreted as follows.
CHAPTER XLVIII
USI, THE SVÂN
"I am Usi, of Ushkul, in the country of the Svâns; Usi the Bear-slayer was my name, as long as I lived among them. The custom of the country is that as often as a female child is born, any youth of the village who looks forward to his need of marriage may come to the cradle and hang his own bullet around the neck of the infant, and from that time she is pledged to him, and he must marry her when she is old enough. When I was a stripling, the wife of our Priest produced him their fourteenth child, a daughter; and I was the first to go in at his door, and bespeak the young creature for myself. But as fortune ordained, the damsel proved deaf and dumb, though in other ways quite useful; and I very justly refused in the presence of all the village to marry her. And this I did, when she was ten years old, allowing her plenty of time for others, who might esteem it to their pleasure and advantage to possess a wife without a tongue. But the very next day, when I was watching the maize, a bullet came through my hat, and lodged in a tree behind me; and when I dug it out, behold it was my own with the fancy pattern on it, with which I had betrothed myself ten years before. To that I need not have paid much attention, but that the Priest had nine well-grown sons, and it would be the duty of all these nine in succession to lie in wait for me, and endeavour to shoot me through the head. The eldest had been too near the mark for me to believe without rashness that the other eight would fire in vain; so I took my good mother's advice, which she gave me with many tears, and left my native place for lifetime. Neither was it safe for me to dwell in any of the villages for miles and miles around, because we people of the Svâns had suffered from want of food for the last two years, and had been obliged to take all the loaves, and corn, and cattle of our neighbours within three days' journey; and so we were out of favour with them.
"On this account I was compelled, having borne a strong hand in those forages, to keep myself away from spots where I would have settled gladly. At a distance I saw beautiful maidens, over the tops of the raspberries; but whenever I desired to draw near them, there was sure to be a father or a brother, whose cow or whose sheep had been beef or mutton to me. And those people bear such things in mind, not being generous as we are. And thus I went along the valleys, feeding on the fruit, wherever the bears had left a tail of it. Then going further towards the rising sun, which is the strength of all of us, I came upon a man who carried a kinjal on a gun-mouth.
"In those days, I could jump as high as I could put my hands up; and being surprised by his pointing at me, I did it to give him time to think. This made him think more of me than I deserved, and instead of shooting me, he asked in what land men could jump so. I could not understand at first, though he did it with all his fingers; because we had kept ourselves apart from other people, whenever we could live without our neighbours' goods. But I was always considered the foremost of the young men for understanding, and I contrived to make out what he meant, and to do a thing which is much harder – to make him know what I meant. He was a soldier of the great Imaum, desiring to shoot Russians; and as soon as we made out one another, he showed me the notches on his gun, and I counted forty-two, and he said every one was the good corpse of a Russian. This made me long to do the like, though the Russians had never shot at me, but my own friends had; and my soul arose to look along a gun at any stranger, even as it had been done to me.
"Others came up, and when they found how straight my barrel was, and what it was famous for doing among the bears, the Captain said, 'Thou shalt do it, my lad, with the bears that eat our people.' And so I was put into Shamyl's army, and for many years enjoyed myself. I have shot three Russian colonels, and small officers by the dozen; and I could have shot the Commander once; but his daughter was by his side, and I stopped my finger when it was on the crook, with my mind upon my mother.
"Twelve years I fought under Shamyl, and did so much good that as often as a great man came on the Russian side, it was my place to put a stop to him. If you come across any of our old men now, and say to them, 'What about Usi the Bear' you will see their eyes sparkle, and hear them say, 'Not one among us could compare with him for sending a Cossack to the devil three-quarters of a verst away.' Alas that I shall no more do it! The times are not as they used to be.
"Then there came a man who was the noblest of all the sons of men to look at that ever the red sun shone upon. Imar, the son of Dadian, Master of the Western Lesghians, stronger than an Auroch bull, and gentler than a suckling woman. His father Dadian had been mighty, and a lord of men; but Imar was as the Saint Christ that stands in gold among the images of clay. Though I was not of his tribe, I craved to be put into his troop, and whatever he did Usi was never far away. Until the war came to an end, and all who were not shot or starved went home to their own mountains. But I dared not go to Ushkul yet, and had forgotten how to live without a rifle in my hands. Then Imar, the son of Dadian, took me, and beholding in me an honest man, and the surest with a long gun of all whom he had proved in battle, he appointed me a little place on the northern slope of Kazbek, to keep the wild beasts from the crops, and the wolves who had thriven by means of the war from eating the helpless children. As long as he reigned I had a hut in the forest, and twenty-five kopeks a week, and all the timber I could cut, and a wife who behaved very softly to me, and bore me several children.
"Then the Russians spread their hands along the mountains and the valleys, when there was no longer any power of men in arms to stop them, and they put a tribute on every house, and they sent away all the leaders of the men who had fought against them, and among them the Lord Imar, to a little island in the West which had never been friendly with them. My money was cut down to ten kopeks; but I had my cattle and sheep and goats, and all the things that I could grow or shoot, until that Princess Marva came, the widow of Rakhan Houseburner, and claimed the command of everything. I would not rebel against the sister of the man I had loved so much, and she said that she sent him all the money to keep him in his exile, and for a long time people believed her. Until a great man of authority was sent to us from Russia, to see to the forests and the revenue, and he told us that the lady had never sent a kopek to her brother, but that the Russians very justly allowed him most of his revenue, because he had friends of clever voices and power in high places. Then the Princess said that I defied her, although I had never said a word of lies, and she sent fierce men to turn me out; but I had a little powder left, and my eye was straight though my hands are old, and I made two of them fall as dead as bears, and the rest flew away, like the shadow of a cloud, when the wind is blowing.
"But a week after that my house was burned, while my wife and I were fast asleep; and I lost the gun that shoots so straight, though I think it must be in the ashes still. My little daughter, nine years old, died in the stream we put her in to relieve her of her death-pain, and the other damsel and both my boys were hurt by jumping into the fir-tree. The hair of my wife's head was scorched so that I had to put a sheep-skin on; and the doctor said that if I had been a smooth man, I never could have worn a shirt again. But people were good, and I had shot a bear, which was hanging on a tree unmelted; and when you have such fat to rub you, you can cure anything outside.
"Ossets, and Lesghians, and such races might think none the worse of Marva for treating them in that kind of way; but Svâns, such as I am, have never abandoned their bodies and their goods to the authority of any one since the time of the great Queen Tamara, none of us can tell how long ago; and although I might not be a true Svân now, yet the nature of the race abode in me. Then, while I was thinking, I heard a thing which stirred me like the trumpet of the great Imaum, – Sûr Imar himself was coming home to take his proper place again, and do good to his people. Great joy was spread among the Lesghians; but the Ossets went against the thought, because he had too much strength of law, and had grievously wronged them of the many goods flowing in to their dwellings from robbery, for the short time he governed at Karthlos. It was said, moreover, that Queen Marva, as she loved to hear herself called, would now have no chance of holding fast her manifold encroachments, fruitful valleys which she had stolen, and flocks and herds, and timber-trees, and crag-sides where some strangers pay her for hunting stones which they can change for gold.
"Now I will tell you a little thing; and it is the wisdom of the wiser days. There are two sorts of bears which prowl and devour in the corn-land and the forest; the big brown bear called Michael, who destroys the crops and the fruit-trees, but is glad to run from an unarmed child, unless his body is wounded; and then there is another bear, not so large indeed, but black with a white frill to its bosom. This animal we call Michaina; and a wise man flies from it, unless he can slay it at one shot; because it will rush upon him in the dark, and tear out his intestines. And our fathers have left word for us through many generations, that the brown bear is the form in which bad men on earth have been condemned to come back to it and see the harm they did; when some of it has been stopped by death. But the black bears are the wicked women, still going on in wickedness, not so often met with as the evil men, but a hundredfold to be dreaded, being black to the depth of their hearts and souls. And this black bear Queen Marva is.
"I had no house in the forest now, and no place left me in the world better than any other; and it mattered little to my flesh what became of all great people. I had my wounded children, or as many as remained of them, to carry on my back sometimes, or sometimes to run and pull me on, according to the power of our courage. And my wife, when I grieved about her hair, which had brought men in office to admire her, said that without it her head felt lighter, and begged me not to accept another woman, with no hut of my own to bring her to, and no meat to put into her. Why she asked me such a thing – when I had never thought of it, and was going along in a steadfast way, with a child on either shoulder-blade – only the Lord, who made most of the women for our good, can tell us.
"Sir, and honourable gentlemen (who have saved my life upon a hair), when I was a boy my teaching was to believe in the Devil only, and to pray to certain images that knew the way to appease him. But now I have been among wiser people, who look up to the sky, and think that it was made for good as well as evil. And whether that be true or false, I have found the people who think thus a great deal better than the dark believers."
At this point the poor Svân broke down, and shed a flood of tears after a long sad gaze at the mountains as if he had no home now, and at the sky as if he had no hope there. We gave him a little more nourishment, for we saw that his tale was coming towards us now; and then he wiped his eyes, and set them sternly, and cast self-pity into the fire of his wrongs.