Dariel: A Romance of Surrey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER LV

AT THE BAR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oria, come at last!" he cried, with a smile to tempt her nearer; "my Oria sent to call me home! The God, who has done this for me, will take care of my daughter!"

Before him stood – betwixt him and me, although I had heard no footsteps – a tall young figure in a long white robe, timid as a woman, and as graceful; but with supple strength quivering for the will to man it. On the left hip hung a heavy sword; but the right hand had fallen away from the hilt, and the shoulders lay back with the sudden arrest. "My son, my son, it is just," cried Imar; "slay me, as I slew thy mother."

Then the shackled man turned his head away, that his eyes should make no plea for him, and nature's dread could be seen in nothing but the quiver of his long arched throat.

But the young man stood as if carved in stone, with both arms stretched to his father, unable to take another step, unable to do anything but wonder.

But betwixt their gaze a dark form leaped, quivering with fury, and wild for blood, too ravenous for slaughter to have formed a proper plan of it. And this was a very lucky thing for me.

For while he danced between them thus, with his hateful face on fire, in the voluptuous choice of murder, there was time for me to leap out of my hole, and get my cramped limbs flexible; not a moment, however, for any kind of thought, and whatever I did was of instinct. What it was I know not, nor does anybody else; it can only be told in a whirl as it befell.

Hisar, I think, made a jump at Hafer, before he saw me, and smacked his face (as if he had been a child), and tried to snatch his sword, but was thrust back, and then drew his own, and flew with it at the shackled Imar's heart. But another was there – thank the Lord in heaven – I caught the flame of Hisar's eyes on mine, as his blade went straight for Imar's breast, and dashed it into splinters with my toorak. Then he hurled the stump at me, drew his kinjal, and sprang, as if he were made of wings, at my breast. I stepped aside quicker than I ever moved at cricket, and as he passed me he ran against so hearty a whack upon his wicked temples, that no more sin was concocted there.

Down he went, like a thistle at the ploughshare, and threw up his long legs, and lay dead, with a tuft of bloody moss between his teeth. I took the stump of his sword, which had struck me in the breast, and cut Sûr Imar free, and hurried him inside (for he was lost as in a vision), and stood with my revolver in the doorway, ready for the onset of the fighting men. These being taken with astonishment hung back, as if they had none to lead them; until the great lady appeared from the tent, to receive the tidings of her brother's death.

Marva came forth in her majestic manner (having turned away her face, perhaps with sisterly compunction), sweeping her black robe along the ground, and framing her handsome features to the proper expression of regret. Now the desire of her life was won. Paramount of the Eastern Ossets, and the Western Lesghians; quit of the brother who had thwarted her, and his son whom she had stolen for revenge and guile; nothing remained but to make her own son the heir, – for he was born in wedlock, though not of it, – marry him to the Lesghian heiress, and herself enjoy all the power and the wealth, while he took his pleasure in the western world. She despised all the ignorance and superstition round her too loftily to act down to it; and perhaps looked down upon herself a little, as she took her seat in the chair of stone. None the less she did it with a royal air, more impressive to us from a woman than from man.

To recover my breath, and be ready, I drew back in the shadow of the prison entrance, where Hafer was standing by his prostrate father; and much as I longed to see all that happened, for the moment I was out of it. Not that I should have been much wiser even in the midst of them, knowing nothing of the Osset tongue, which sounds like a chorus of bull-frogs, bagpipes, pigs under a harrow, a cock in the roup, and a hooter at the junction, even when the men are calm and keep the women silent. However, those who understood them tell me that they reported thus.

"Oh, lofty lady, mother of thy tribe, widow of the great Prince Rakhan, the sentence hath been given according to thy will, and carried out even as the Heaven hath decreed."

"Wise men, speak not of any will of mine; whatever hath been done is good and righteous, to establish justice, and avenge the wrong. The barb of the arrow of the Lord flies straight; never can it fail by any crookedness of men. Yet the great Prince who has fallen was the nearest of all flesh to me. I will be content with your testimony. I cannot gaze upon him."

"But – but we know not how to say it, so as to mingle truth with pleasure. Oh, lofty lady, it is not our enemy, Imar of the Kheusurs, who is dead. Rather is it sorrowful indeed for us to speak. Would that the Lord had made us liars, when He hath cast the truth into the breast of evil!"

"Wise men, what is it? Or am I to call you fools, if ye could not even execute your own decree aright?"

"It is no deed of ours. It is a spirit from the tombs, the tombs that were made before the world itself. Let the high lady come and see."

She was girding up her long robe while they spoke, and the jewels on her shapely feet flashed forth. With a gesture of disdain she waved the old men back, but a score of wild warriors followed her, as she strode towards the dungeon, to see her brother's corpse. Instead of that, she stood before the body of her son, and a loud shriek proved that she was still a woman. From the gloom of my shelter, I saw her proud eyes aghast, and her arms thrown up, and her tall form quivering. Then she controlled herself, and looked around.

"To weep by-and-by, – to avenge him first," she shouted (as they told me afterwards), and such is the power of another's passion that I felt like a murderer, and went forth with an impulse of shame to surrender myself. For I had never slain a man till now.

"Idiot, get back!" cried a voice from the cliff, the voice no doubt of Jack Nickols.

"Slay him, – shoot all of you, shoot, shoot, slay him!" the lady called out, and herself seized a gun; "shoot him, though it be through my own body!"

This order was beyond my understanding; but I saw at least a score of muzzles looking at me, and I had not even the wit to move.

"Which will first reach me, the sound or the bullets?" That I should thus ponder shows clearly enough that fear had overcome all sense of terror.

"Now then; cut it short," I said, according to Jack Nickols, – though I cannot remember a word of it, – and the fellows were surprised, and drew their clumsy fingers back, and went down on their knees with superstition. But the Princess Marva drew near to me, and the butt of a gun was against her hip. She saw that I stood unarmed and nerveless, and she could not help playing with the joy of her revenge. To be shot by a woman! I had no power left. I could only stare, and wait for it.

"But I know him, I recognise my dear friend," she exclaimed in French, while she fingered the trigger, with the muzzle not two yards from my breast; "it is the gentleman desirous of my emeralds. Ah, thou shalt have them! How many? Ten?"

To prolong my agony, she began to count, with glittering eyes and a courteous smile, tapping my time on the trigger; and would you believe that I could not stir, and could only keep my gaze fixed on her? Then as she cried Seven, a white spot leaped – as it seemed to me – from the palpitant surge of her bosom. Her dark robe opened, and her musket dropped, as the roar of a gun rang overhead, and the Princess sank, with her lips still smiling, as dead as a stone, into low-born arms.

"Usi, the Svân, hath his revenge!" a shrill cry from the crags proclaimed; "Wolf's meat hath choked the Queen of Wolves."

Fear fell on all of us, as if the sky had opened; and the warriors grounded their guns upon the moss, and crowded round one who had an image on his breast. Then with one accord they began a mournful howl, of a quality to come from the bowels of the earth, or send all her inhabitants into them. My presence of mind was restored by this; and with scarcely a wound I leaped back into my shelter, recovered my weapons, and determined to die hard.