Dariel: A Romance of Surrey

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.

CHAPTER XLIX

THE EYE OF GOD

"Seven days agone I was seeking in the woods, together with my wife and little ones, with the worst of the winter past behind us, and kind roots shining above the snow (which had smothered all of them for months), and pith of growth as good as corn, to be found by those who are used to it; for the desire of our hearts was only to keep a spark of life in them, until we might get to places where mankind grows corn and grinds it. For I had heard of an ancient friend, the best man I ever knew to fight, when it came to axe or kinjal, though he never could shoot afar like me; and his name was Stepan, the Lesghian. For a number of years he had been away, following his master's fortunes; but lately he was come back, they said, bringing household goods to prepare for him.

"Then in the dark woods, as we crept along, weary and hungry and trying vainly to comfort one another, we beheld a company of well-fed people, riding in the timber-track below, which we had been afraid to occupy. By the white sheep-skins upon their heads, we knew that they were Ossets, men of Queen Marva's bodyguard, whom she had chosen from all the tribe; even as the great Imaum had riders of the Avar race continually faithful to him. At the head of them rode the young Prince Hisar, as wicked a young man as ever drew breath; and behind them came a score of footmen, rejoicing in cruelty, and haters of the Lord.

"'Go you on, my child,' I said to my wife Rhada; 'in the morning I will be with you by the great red pine;' so I left my family in the hands of God, and putting dust upon my head, like an old man seeking alms, I fell in with the rear of that sprawly-jointed troop, and none of them knew that it was Usi. When a man calls for alms in the name of the Lord, his brethren are happy to escape expense by letting him walk with them, as if they heard him not. And so I went on with them till night, for I wanted to know what their wickedness was; and I sang them sweet verses which they could not understand, and they gave me some scraps to keep me quiet. Then from a boy who was pitiful to me, perceiving how much of the world I had seen, when the flesh-pots hung upon the crooks and bubbled, I learned what the meaning of this armed troop was. They were coming with a strong force by order of their Mistress, to make a hearty welcome to her brother and his daughter upon their return to the native land, from the place where the Russian steam-road ends at the Northern plain of the great mountains. All had been settled that Sûr Imar and his daughter should come from Vladikaukaz in a hired troika, and be received by their loving sister and aunt, at a place appointed; and there they must leave the great Dariel road, and be conducted by her to Karthlos, with great rejoicing and affection kindled. But why were all these men thus armed? Not as for travelling only? Why did they carry ropes and chains? Why was there not a Lesghian among them? and why was there no sign of the Princess, eager to embrace her kindred? Loving Sûr Imar as I did, I resolved to go on, and understand these things.

"On the following day, the Ossets drove me from among them with many blows; but I cared not, since I had renewed my strength with plentiful waste victuals, and a warm sound sleep. For I could watch them none the worse for being outside of their wicked troop, and by this time I well knew what they meant. So I followed them to the great Russian road, towards which the forest track whereon I found them led; and there they encamped on either side. There were steep rocks around them, full of black caves and crannies, and without much risk I crawled up into one of these, so that I could see all these warriors and the road beyond them, without any risk of their seeing me.

"Before I had been there very long, a three-horse carriage came up the road, followed by two carts piled with goods; and the young chief rode to meet them, and much salutation might be seen, and the carriage and carts were unloaded and sent back again, so that only Sûr Imar – for I knew his gait and stature even at that distance – with a young lady, and two attendants, a man and a woman, stood in the road. Hisar no doubt had assured them that the Princess was close at hand with vehicles well prepared to conduct them home. But it seemed to me that the Prince and the lady were looking to this side and to that, and gazing at every corner, as if they expected some one who ought to have met them, but was not to be found. And suddenly I thought that they were looking out for Stepan, Imar's milk-brother and most faithful friend. And I wished with all my heart that he were there, or could even be advised of his lord's return.

"Sir, and honourable gentlemen, I will not deceive you by speaking as if I had seen the shameful things that happened, almost before one could think of them, to the great Chief and his daughter. For they were led very politely into a dark narrow valley that slopes from the road, and cannot be discerned at all from it. And a torrent, that rushes along the lower end, goes by with such an uproar that an army with drums might scarcely be heard at the mouth of it. They were led there perhaps on pretence of a hospitable meal such as I would with joy pursue. But in sad truth it was to overthrow them by means of ropes, and loops, and trees, for Sûr Imar was known to be the strongest man in all the great army of Shamyl; and although he might now be unarmed and defenceless, it would be easier to master him by fraud than force. And although I saw not the doing of it, the old head sees more than young eyes sometimes; according to an ancient tag of ours, 'The grey bush looks round the corner.'

"They came not back into the wide strong road, for fear of Cossacks or other gapes; but went along the forest ways of rock and slough and waterfall; and through my old experience in the turn of war – for Shamyl was fox, wolf, and lion in one – it was easy enough for me to keep in their track, without giving them any smell of me. They had my old commander strapped on poles across two horses, which must have been great pain for him, and would have torn a loose man in two; but I never heard him speak a groan, although they passed through hollow places, where the misery of a man sounds loud. The fair damsel had not her senses with her, being of softer substance; and cruel as they were, they bore her gently upon a litter of slender wood, not desiring to hurt her yet, and having perhaps later occasion for her. Some of them jested about her beauty, till the violent young man rode back, and sent their loose mouths sprawling on the rocks. He means to keep her for himself, I trow.

"When the sun was getting low, and but for my memory of honest warfare, and the love of an old soldier for a kindly leader, I must have dropped away through weariness, the feet of their horses struck on softer ground, and behold they were entering a fair green valley, on the northern breast of Kazbek, where the sun strikes not from on high, but twinkles along the rocky passages, when the slope of the earth invites him, in the morning and in the evening time, like a low flight of arrows, such as I have seen when the Svâns were mighty bowmen. Wherefore this valley is never parched up, as they are on the south of the mountains, but is covered with moss, like the breath of night, and soft with trickling moisture. And the learned men say that an ancient race, who had come through the gates of Caucasus, having conquered the whole world all around, set up their last pillars here, and desired to go no further. And the masonry of giants is there to prove it, such as no man can make when the world grows old.

"Here that troop of brigands – for such a name is almost too good for them – opened a narrow door in the cliff, which cannot be seen from every place, because dark rocks encompass it. What they did there I cannot tell, for I durst not set foot down the valley, and there was no getting near it in time from above, so as to look down over them. I could only discover that some went in, stepping as if with burdens, while others were left on guard outside. By and by, I heard a clanking like the swing of an iron door, and presently all, or as I thought all, the riders came back, and with laughter and singing, and the young chief Hisar at their head, made off by the track which leads home to their village.

"Then I did a very foolish thing, which has all but cost me my life, without being of any use to Sûr Imar. If I had counted the men on horseback, which I might have contrived perhaps to do, though it would not have been very easy, I should have learned that they were not all gone, but that two were left on guard. Descrying no horses tethered in the valley, and knowing that the prisoners could not escape, I concluded rashly that all the Ossets were gone, at least for the present, and that I might safely spy all around, and perhaps even try to let Sûr Imar know that I would do my best to save him. So I hastened with some care, but still too boldly, along the foot of the cliff which rims the valley, so as to endeavour to approach the door. For the shadows were wiping out the shapes and colours of a man, or a bush, or a rock standing still; while the soft moss and herbage took away the fear of sound.