Dariel: A Romance of Surrey

CHAPTER LVI

HARD IS THE FIGHT

What right had I to be out of breath, after standing stock-still no one knows how long, like a cardboard dummy to be shot at? But there seemed to be a hollow where my heart in its duty should have been staunch and steadfast; and my brain (having never been wrought up like this) must have lost its true balance and standard. Otherwise could it have shocked me to know that a career of cruelty and wickedness was brought to an ignominious close?

"Marva is dead," I kept on saying; "the greatest woman of the age is dead! Not the best, not the purest, not even a true woman. But how grand was her attitude, and how she disdained me! And now a wretched Svân has shot her!"

Let any one despise me as he likes, with reason on his tongue and humanity in his eyes. For the world at large it might be better to have such a woman stretched beneath the turf; but a man with his heart in the right place – which the muzzle of her musket knew too well – could not help feeling for her grandeur.

However, it was not for me to lay down the law, or even to stand up for it against this crew of savages. To keep out of their way was my one desire, and at first there seemed to be some chance of it, with their leader a corpse, and superstition frowning at them from the dungeon-gate. Hoping thus, I stood back in a niche of granite, while a bullet or two sang along the vault, and I strove to recover the spirit of a man, by thinking of my country and the luck we have in turning the corner of situations, where others would lie down and breathe their last.

The bar to which Sûr Imar had been bound was still in place; but he was not in sight, neither could I see his son, the gentle youth sent to assassinate him. Then I heard the sound of heavy blows, and concluded that the younger man was striving to release his sister, while the father lay half-conscious still from brutal cruelty and want of food. There was none but myself to guard the entrance – for Usi and Nickols had not appeared – until our friends at the valley's mouth should have time to come to the rescue.

Glad was I to think, as I did at first, that the savage warriors, scared and puzzled, and without a leader, would now hang back; as they had done when the Lesghian chief brought their Prince Rakhan to account. And so it would have been, by their own confession, but for the ferocity of one young man, Karkok the brother of Lura, and the chief friend of that Hisar whom I had struck down. Karkok cannot have been stirred up by love, or loyalty, or any other noble motive, – for who could have regretted Hisar? – but by ambition of the meanest sort, and a dash at the mastery of the tribe, for he was now the last relative of Rakhan.

This upstart fellow brought the fighting men together; and they laid aside the bodies of Queen Marva and her son, in fear of their being trampled on; and then (with a screech that must have set all the teeth of the flintiest echo aching) at the prison-gate they rushed, and the valves being back there was only my poor body between them and the helpless inmates.

When I saw those fellows advancing upon me, capering, and flinging hairy arms about, and tossing white sheepskins, and flourishing long muskets, beyond any denial I was frightened, and would have given every penny I was worth to be in my own little saddle-room once more. My hand shook so badly that the blue revolver revolved without any mechanism; and the prudence which has been implanted in us all suggested that the bravest man must value his own bacon. When a friend assures me that I was gloriously brave, it would be a rude thing to contradict him; but what a different tale my conscience tells!

In a word, just presence of mind enough was left me to show that I must fight it out. To make a bolt of it was useless, for whither could I go? Anywhere across the cave would bring a bullet into me; and as for slinking along the dark wall, where would that take me, even if I could contrive it? Into the very arms of Dariel, – a truly sweet refuge, but not for a coward. All I could do was to say to myself that the lines were hard, but the Lord had made them so, and I must trust in Him to deliver me.

Whether it were faith, or sense of justice, or the love of woman, or something far lower than any of these, the brute element inborn in the sons of men, – no sooner did I see hateful eyes agoggle with lust for blood glaring at me, and great mouths agrin for a grab at me, than the like spirit kindled in myself.

"Blood you shall have, but it shall be your own first," I shouted in English, and leaped at them from the mouth of the cave, like the demon of Kazbek. They took me for that great power, and fell back, while a ball slit the tip of my ear off, and before they could rally there were two as dead as stones with bullets in their heads, and two more fell upon them with their skulls cracked by the swing of my toorak. "Want any more?" I asked, having two charges left, and many of them showed the better part of valour. But a kinjal was thrown at me down a lane of cowards, and stuck in my breast, and that rallied the crowd. Three or four made at me from behind, and I know not how it was, but down I went from a terrible whack on the back of my head, at the very same moment that I shot their new chief.

A very lucky shot, and one that governed all the issue. But of that I knew nothing until weeks had passed, my latest sense being of a white flash across me, and a plunge into a bottomless abyss of some one, who might be anybody. "There let him lay," as a great poet says – and never would he have stood up again, if his skull had been of Norman growth.

But a mighty champion just in time had rushed into the thick of it, and scattered a storm of sword-flash, as the lightning fires a forest. Two ruffians, poised for the final stab at my defenceless body, swung backward with their arms chopped off, and the blade that should have drained Sûr Imar's blood revelled in the gore of his enemies. For the fury of the mild and gentle "Hafer" (now that he had learned his wrongs and guessed his father's) swooped on those sheep-clad fiends, as a whirlwind leaps upon a drying-ground of tallow candles. Would that I had only kept sufficient sense to see, for they tell me that it was magnificent. Heads that are full of hate should have some of it let out, and several of the worst were stopped for ever from receiving any more misanthropy. All who knew anything about it said that Rakhabat himself, the worst man-hater of all the demons of Kazbek, was seen to come down with the wings of a black eagle, and enter the vesture of the white "Lamb-angel." That was the Osset name for this poor Prince; and now having broken bounds, he proved the irony of his claim to it. For soon the chief-justice of the court went down, and so did the foreman of the jury, and a pair of clerks who sought nothing but their living, and others who had come to see things out without any view to their own exit. Among them raged "Hafer," like Hector of Troy, with twenty years, and more than that, of goodness to let out; and no man could shoot straight at him, because he was in the right, while all their guns were crooked.

Nevertheless the force of numbers must have been too great for him, – for the conscience of Ossets still requires to be formed, – but for the rapid and resistless charge of Stepan and Strogue, and the Lesghians, and the miners, down the long valley, and over the moss reeking already with more blood than it could staunch. At the same moment Usi, the Svân, and Jack Nickols, who had been hampered by some tangle of the rope, shouting to their comrades, fell in upon the flank; and the noble tribe of Ossets, or at any rate that branch of it, split up and fell asunder like an unroped fagot. There can be no certainty of justice in this world; but even the races connected with them by the tenderest ties of co-robbery found it in their hearts, when the facts could not be altered, to pronounce the only verdict – "Served them right."

CHAPTER LVII

BUT NOT IN VAIN

In recounting my little adventures – as I am begged sometimes to do – upon coming to this particular part my general practice is to stop, as if I had no more to say. Whereas it is only that I want to know in which of the persons concerned my friends appear to take most interest. And to my pride, more perhaps than to my credit, their first question always is, not "What became of you, George?" but "What became of Dariel?" And that is more than I could tell for many a long day afterwards.

When the door of her cell was beaten in, she came forth as in a dream or trance, without any wonder, or fear, or question, possessed by one purpose alone, – to share the fate of her dear father. In the gloom of the tunnelled rock she glanced at the tall form of her brother, but the light even there was enough to show that this was not the one she wanted. And he, having reason from very early days to give a wide berth to the feminine form, drew aside gladly for a strange young lady to go her way without compressing him.

For this young fellow, Prince Origen, the son of Imar and Oria, the child who escaped by his fall into the drift (when Marva's genuine Hafer perished), being substituted for him, and brought up with plenty of chastisement, and strict privations, and a candid absence of affection, had never been encouraged to think, or act, or even to feel for his poor young self.

What then could be expected of him, when in a moment at one blow the whole of his world was cut from beneath him, his own identity plucked away, and not even a quiet corner left for considering who he was, or how he came to be? In such a case is it surprising that his head went round so rapidly that he might fairly be said to have lost it? Instead of attending to his new-found father, he had simply stood staring at the prostrate form, till moans of despair from that inner cell were brought to his ear by the chilly draughts of rock. Thereupon he rushed in, and while I kept the entrance, he used his great strength to such purpose that his unknown sister glided past him and hurried to their unconscious father. And truly it was a great mercy for me, as well as a glory to this grand young fellow, that, instead of waiting longer where he was not wanted, he ran out at once to obtain fresh air, and get some light shed upon so many marvels. Rapid action and muscular exertion, for which he found ample cause at once, probably saved him from congestion of the brain, and certainly saved me from perforation of the heart.

For why should I make light of my defeats, any more than extol my victories, which latter it would be hard to do by reason of their nonentity? Those Ossets had performed an exploit declared to be impracticable by all the bravest sons of Wykeham during my generation. That is to say, they had cracked my skull, which was not a piece of biscuit china, but of solid and heavy metal, sounder I trow than its contents. And those who have studied the subject tell me that the thicker the pot is, which nature has provided for our poor brains to boil in, the more ticklish the job is to make good the splinters. What tinker can patch an enamelled saucepan? And a queer saucepan must our brainpan be, if, after all the smut shed round it and the slow smoke under it, any steam of self-conceit still has a puff to lift the cover. Let any man who thinks himself a wonder get a bit of his skull (too small perhaps for a chick to pick up for the good of his gizzard) crumbled in upon the brain he is so proud of; and if he has the luck to meet with a friend who can get it out again, when he comes to know his own name once more, will he count it worth remembering?

But as for myself – because perhaps I had never thought wonders of it – trouble beyond belief was needful ever to make it sound again. When I came to know the facts – as I did at last – it may appear a singular result, but as true as I sat up in bed, the salt tears ran into my soup so fast that they had to give me another basin. Not through any weakness, as an ill-natured man might fancy, but just because I was so happy to come home to a world where loving folk were living, and people better than myself, who wished to keep me with them.

Perhaps I ought not to talk about it, and yet it seems shabby and ungrateful not to say how much they had done for me. Here was my sister Grace, together with her husband Jackson Stoneman, rushing from the honeycomb of their blue moon among the soft Italian lakes into the "horrid Caucasus;" and bringing with them by telegraph to Surrey that wonderfully clever Dr. Hopmann, to whose skill I owe it that my reason was restored as good as ever it was before, and perhaps even better, for when it came back it had slept in the dew of humility.

But the doctor's humility was not increased, neither deserved it so to be. Because the most eminent physician at Tiflis, a Frenchman of vast renown, being called in at once by my host Sûr Imar, had pronounced all surgical operation futile, and declared that the owner of that battered brain might linger on for weeks, until inflammation kindled, but could never be better than an imbecile, even if he failed to satisfy science by ending as a raving madman.

"Shorge, my poy," were the first words passed by my ears into any superior part, "now you let your tongue come – very slowly. Put a good soup at the back of him, then put him in his house quietly, and go to shleep again."

"But you haven't finished cooking the partridges yet; and I want to have the one that is over."

This cupidity might scarcely seem to prove the possession of high intellect, yet Hopmann declares that the noblest utterance has never afforded him so fine a moral. "Zat Frenchman! Vot he know, to talk so quick? No fear for a prain with a memory like zat. Shorge, they kill bairds all the year round here. Go to shleep while I cook you four bartriches."

For another week he took good care to keep me in a state of body which wanted no motion of the mind inside it, nor even any quick heart-action, except at the sight of a knife and fork. But I feel ashamed to say how long the disabled body was the lord of all, and the nobler elements of our existence were not allowed even to speak to it.

"I have dishpelled his shister and his sweetheart off," I heard Dr. Hopmann say to some one whom I could not see, after he had attended to my straps one day. "Vot they want? I tell you no. I let you help, because you not care. His leetle prain stand nothing yet."

"But I do care, because it was all through me," the reply was in a sweet low voice, as I caught a glimpse of a fair young lady, dressed in black and retiring towards the door; "you may have got rid of his sister, doctor, but there is one you will never get rid of, so you may just as well give it up. How much longer? And I am sure it would do him good. Why only yesterday I knew – "

"Ach, you be off! I am ze master here. We are not in England, where ze vimmen rule the roast."

The lady departed hastily, as if she had found that over-true, while the German bolted the heavy door, and came back with a grin on his solid ruddy face.

"Am I never to see any one again," I muttered, for gratitude does not flourish and abound with a man who has spent two months on his back, "nobody but a confounded German, who bolts everybody out?"

"Zat is shoost vot I vant to hear. Shorge, zat proves how you come round. If you say, 'Dank you, Tochtor Hopmann, you have saved my life, I shall never forget it, how can I ever hope to recompensh you?' then I know that your prain is very weak, not fit for healthy Englishman's at all. But when you call him a 'confounded Sherman,' he know, he see, that the nation have come up, which is the most obstinate of nature not to die. All the same, you lie down again. The world go on very well without you, Shorge."

It came into my head that this was not quite right, and that as an honest man I ought to try to stop it; but torpor overpowered my sense of justice, as it has a right to do, when the case is not our own. "I only want to know who that lady was," I mumbled.

"Zat gal was nothing of your concerns," Hopmann replied, as he sat down by the table, and began to rub some cake tobacco he had sliced; "little English Fräulein of the name of Pezzeril. Zat bad fe-loe you knock worse than they knock you bring her from England with a heap of lies, and make sham to marry her; then he throw her off, and drive long black stick through her brother, because he haf desire of too moosh money. Englishmans often make mishtakes zat way."

"But I want to know about some one else, somebody different altogether, somebody who never thinks of money – "

"Ach zen, what fool can it be? Sometimes leetle gal not think of money; but boys do, vimmen do, men obliged to follow zem."

"Nonsense, doctor! The men set the example. But you know well enough what I want to know. I want to know where I am, and all about it."

The German came over and looked at me, and turned up one of my eyelids, and then did the same to the other, while he blew his smoke over his shoulder; and then he said "No fear. Shorge, you are a brick, and your prain go the way to belong to him. One leetle drop I give you shoost to clear both ears, and zen I tell you everyzing."

O double-dyed villain! With my usual faith, I accepted and made the most of his kind offering; and when I awoke again where was he? Perhaps in a boat at the mouth of the Rion, listening for the mill-wheels of a paddle-steamer to grind the slow grit of distance. For a telegram had reached Karthlos that the vegetable Earl, the good Melladew, lay at the last twist of our mortal coil internal, through travail on a bicycle with a County Council lecturer who had taken crab-apples to be synonymous with crabs.

When this abandonment was first brought home to me, my behaviour was not what it should have been. We are all too apt to suppose ourselves neglected, and doubly so when the system has been lowered, and the action of the heart restricted. To my shame I confess that a miserable pessimism – such as manhood should scorn on its own behalf, even without higher thoughts to lead it – invaded and began to vanquish me.

"What is the good of anything? All nature is cruelty; all life a curse. Every one for himself, and for none of us a God. Bitterness, and contempt of mankind, and a reckless fight for one's own hand, – those are the only solid things black destiny has left us. There is no choice before us. As for sense of duty, or the stuff we call honour, or patriotism, or the absurdity called love – "

"My dear young friend, my directions are precise and I cannot depart from them. You may talk as much as you like about flowers, or food, or sport, or the hills and valleys, or anything in fact that you know anything about. And while you do that, you may refresh yourself and grow stronger and stronger with these good things here." Sûr Imar, who had risen from behind a curtain, pointed to a table which was laden with fine import of exceedingly attractive fragrance. "On the other hand, if you insist upon wandering into difficult and unpleasant subjects, which no man has ever yet made head or tail of, my orders are to anticipate the inevitable injury to the poor head and enfeebled system by prompt administration of these two doses." My host laid his hands upon a large flat bottle nearly full, but with room below the cork to shake up a profoundity of horrors at the bottom, and a box of pills as big as bullets. But before he could approach me, my heart and stomach, and every other organ that can influence opinion underwent a fundamental change.

"I did not mean it. You must make allowance. Only think of what has been done to me. Sûr Imar, you are not a small minded man. You can see how a fellow gets driven to sing out. Emptiness must bear a great deal of the blame. I entreat you to look at the matter largely. I am ready to vow that the world is good, and everything contained in it, except – except that bottle, and that box."

"Hasty conversions are not worth much. But from you, George, we accept anything. I hope to confirm you in the better faith, with these little proofs that the world produces one or two things not entirely bad; and after that, somebody – well, never mind, unless you are inclined to be amiable."

The chief was now in full Lesghian dress, a very magnificent affair to look at, stately, and graceful, and impressive; but he proved himself worthy of apparel even grander, by putting away all disrelishing sights, and waiting upon me like a hospital nurse, until I could compass not a dainty morsel more, and then he said, "Shut your eyes, and perhaps you will have a little dream."

Was it a little dream? If so, I pray you tell me of a great one. Expecting nothing I lay back upon the quiet pillows, quite content, as young men are – for age destroys that comfort – to fancy that the world is good, and governed by a gentle Lord who waves a hand when we drop our eyes, that we may try to look up again. When the pride of strength is crushed, and violence of the will lies low, and a man is able to take himself at his proper insignificance, sometimes a little flow of calm glides in upon his nature, so that all is soft and bright, and his undulations multiply the silver and gold of heaven.

For behold, as I was gazing with a sweet and tranquil wonder, caring not to enquire even where I was, or who I was, but taking as it came to me the good-will of the time, and welcome of the friendly air – behold there came (as it were a vision, not to be enquired into, but accepted with the smiles of sleep) the form and face that had never left me, – though never could I see them clearly, – the presence without which my own presentment was all absence.

It was not for me to be certain yet, played with as I had been by visions that cry advantage of the brain, when even a pennyweight thereof is gone; neither was I clear enough to indulge in bright aerial doubt, as adolescent genius may. All I knew was "here I am;" and nature needed no more proof, when I had given myself a substantial pinch. "Is there any one here or there at all?" I seemed to say, but could not be sure of uttering or thinking anything.

Then, as sure as I am sitting here this day, the last thing that ever I could have believed was done concerning me and to me. Dariel came, and I knew nothing, except that here was Dariel. I feared to look direct, or even glance as if I meant it, being now little more than a lump of patches, with gingery tufts among them; and fool enough in my heart to think that love would be ashamed of me. I cannot say another word to teach any one who does not know, or do good to one who does. At such a time is there any man, or even any woman, who notices the tint of cheeks, the curve of lips, and eyebrows, the guidance of the breath, or even the quick and tremulous enquiries, and lingering watches of the eye? My love was looking at me thus, with a sad and piteous misgiving, whether there might be any hope that I was large of heart as she was, – for now she felt it trembling, – and yet with some cold arm of pride and maiden fear thrown round it, to hold it back from being offered till it had been asked for. And I was looking at my love, with nothing but abasement, that anything I had ever done could make her feel afraid of me; and yet with some victorious hope that it was because she loved me.

"Yes, I do, I do," she said, as if she saw the very thing I wanted to be sure of. "With all my heart I do. But how shall I make you believe it? After all that I have done, how can you ever believe it?"

This made me look about and wonder; for all I wanted was her voice, – to listen to its soft sweet tones, and feel that it was full of kindness, and know that it was meant for me; and then to see the smile perhaps that came so often with her words, and never failed to follow them if ever they forgot themselves.

"You are not to me as you were; you think me of no value now, because I have not been as true, and obstinate of truth against all signs and symptoms and testimony, as an English lady would have been. If you have in your mind decided so to estimate me, there is nothing more for me to say. Only that you must not think, because you will not let me show it, that I am base enough not to feel the wonderful things you have done for us. For me it is nothing, for I am not worth it; but for my father, and my brother, and for stopping cruel wickedness, – and now they have nearly killed you, so that you do not even know me."

She had tried to make her meaning clear, by keeping herself a good way off, and looking at the mountains more than me, and speaking as if her words came one by one from some type-writer; until the thought of my mishap and long disablement brought her near. Then I saw how she was trembling, and withdrawing her hands to hide it, and striving to make her eyelids proof against the shower inside them. With that the power of my love arose, and I said, "Dariel, look at me."