Dariel: A Romance of Surrey

"This exhortation was of no effect. Amazement and terror quite overcame their natural discretion, and we found it impossible to parley with them. So great was the outcry that we stood aghast, till those faithful Cossacks came running, or rather staggering to the rescue, which restored our power of action. We bound them in couples to convenient trees with some ropes we had brought for the purpose; and then as the ladies still declined to join us, we wrapped all the most important of them in their cloaks, and placed them on our horses. In this they assisted us to some extent, by kindly disclosing the rank of each other. Thus we obtained all who were of any value from a financial point of view, twenty-two of sterling substance; and at their entreaty and assurance of amendment we took a domestic for each of them, and turned our horses' heads towards the glen where the vehicles awaited us.

"My instructions were to leave no room for doubt as to our possession of six Princesses, whose names I will not give, because most of them, I trust, are still alive, and none the worse for their captivity. Enough that they were of exalted rank, and in command – as the Russian ladies contrive to be – of the Commanders of the army opposed to us. Therefore, before we started, I stood upon the terrace in front of the tents, with our horses pawing the turf, which was almost a novel treat to them, and the white moon making a picture of us. And there with great deference and courtesy, I called over from the list provided me the names of their incomparable Highnesses, the Princess O – , and the Princess D – , &c.; and each of them made answer according to temperament, and sense of resignation to the will of Heaven. Then I gave the word to start, and remained the last, to bring up the rear as in duty I was bound.

"But suddenly a slender and timid figure came gliding, as if in the haste of despair, from the shadow of a tent, and stood close to me. It was the lovely maiden in the silver-pink attire, and she drew her veil partly aside, and glanced in the clear moonlight at my face, and then dropped her dark eyes, and then lifted them again with quivering tears like a suppliant – 'Oh, Captain, am I to be left behind?'

"'Lady, have no fear,' I said very gently, and half afraid to look again at her; 'you shall not be left unguarded. But tell me who you are, the fairest and the youngest of so many.'

"'Alas, sir, I am not worth money now,' she answered with her white hands clasped together; 'there is none of my race to pay ransom now. There is not even a wealthy friend, to help, or to shelter Oria.'

"'The Princess Oria, the lily-bud of Kajori, the last of the Royal House of Georgia, to which the race of Rurik is a mushroom! Princess Oria, I do you homage.'

"As I made her a low salute, which I would not have offered to the Czar himself, she turned away as if she would not see it, and a soft sob made me feel afraid. This was not one of your haughty mesdames, who let the men fancy that they carry them by storm, while they laugh in their own proud breasts, with knowledge that they are the Masters, as soon as they like. I could hear the Princess D. in the distance, rating the man who carried her on the cushion provided in front of him, and I knew that he had a bad time of it.

"'What are the commands of your Royal Highness?' I asked, with an emphasis on the title, which she alone of the proud bevy could claim. 'Behold, I am proud to be your slave.'

"She rose to the remembrance of her childhood, when she had been made much of, as the last descendant of Queen Tamara; and then her pride melted into a flood of tears, and the sense of helpless maidenhood. She tried to say something, but it only came to sobs.

"'Trust yourself to me,' I said, 'I cannot leave you here at the mercy of drunken Cossacks. I am Sûr Imar of the Lesghians, not a Moslem, but a Christian. By the body of Christ, none shall harm you, while I live.'

"There was no time for further adjurations. She bowed her beautiful head, and drew down her long veil, and in a moment the love of my life was in my arms, and on the soft pillow in front of me, with my horse at full gallop, in the broad stretch of the moon. Like an image of marble she lay before me, and I touched her as if she were an image of glass. The troopers were astonished when we overtook them, but they knew better than to say a word, or down they would have gone, Russian Princess and all. For I was not in the cue to stand insolence. Having given my orders I kept in the rear, grudging even the moon between the bars of shadow a glimpse at the figure in my precious trust. But no man can think of such things, and then tell them. For, they only come once in the nightmare of life.

"Shamyl was delighted, when we brought him his fair prisoners, and he did his very best in his peasant style to be courteous and polite to them. As the leader of the expedition I had the privilege of introducing them; and it was really a fine thing to see how they behaved to him, and he to them. He gave himself airs which made me smile; and before so much rank and beauty – infidel though it might be – he forgot for the moment that he was the Prophet of the Lord. And as for the ladies, although they were bound in consistency to abhor him, not only did they forego the attempt, but all who had rank to make such a claim decent, insisted upon having a lock of his hair.

"In a word, the Princesses were all so happy, when by means of a flag of truce they had received from their friends a large supply of raiment and other luxuries, that the hope of getting a first-rate figure for them was endangered. Instead of frantic adjurations, and despairing outcries, their letters now were full of bright descriptions and gay narratives; and proud as we were of their good opinions, we could not afford them to that extent. It became needful on this behalf to send the fair captives to a duller place, to some desolate spot, where even a woman could not contrive to see much of the world. Darghi, in the depths of Daghestan, and far away even from the echoes, was a place of so lofty a character that the fashions of the Ark were as valid as the latest announced from Paris; and thither I was ordered to conduct these ladies, for the creation of discontent among them, the scenery being beautiful, but sparsely populated. And if the love of Nature were by any means as potent in the Russian breast as the English ladies now declare it to have grown in theirs, perfect happiness should have been the lot of these fair Princesses. There was nothing to disturb them, beauty reigned on every side; and beauty should have reigned within.

"But alas that human nature never, at least in its feminine state and form, finds satisfaction in the outward type! Among the rugged mountains, and with frequent shift, and much discomfort, these fair creatures had been bright, and cheerful, and perilously amiable. A flag on a rock, or a drum at the corner, or the flash of a helmet in the hollow, was enough to send their active minds into fifty pleasant flutters. But here they had no stir of war, no delightful dreads to rouse them, only the depths of lonely peace, and the repose, for which they had so often sighed. For a day or two, they tried to enjoy it, and spoke of the pleasures of their childhood, and roved about in cotton jackets as if they were longing to be peasants. Our duty was to defend them only, and never interfere with them, so long as they kept within certain bounds; and we gave them no cause to complain of us; but endeavoured to do our duty well, as sentries of so many money-bags.

"Strange as it must appear, there was nothing that irritated them more than this. They could not bear to be regarded in that light, and being too proud to come out of it themselves, what did they do but send their maids – they may not have meant it, but so it came to pass – to produce a flirtation among my men. Precautions had been taken (as we thought) against any process of that sort, by detailing for this custody only grizzled veterans, who had wives at home, and could not understand a single word of Russian. But this, though a step in the right direction, did not go quite far enough; and several of our villagers beyond the prime of life behaved in a manner more appropriate to their sons. So that I found myself compelled, in the proper discharge of my office, to use increasing diligence from day to day. For one of the Russian ladies, being the mother of two little girls, had obtained permission to bring her favourite French governess, as lively a girl as ever lived, and acquainted with half-a-dozen languages. This Mademoiselle de J – , – for I will show her the same consideration as her wealthier comrades, – was perpetually forming little plots of the wildest and most romantic kind, for the escape of all the captive band. With a view to that, she took upon herself to inspect me closely, every time I came to a little gate, newly put across the pass, by my special orders, which had created much offence inside. There was no other way, by which these ladies, who now placed every confidence in me, could manage to get away at all, without perpendicular motion; unless it were the narrow winding passage leading into a sombre wood, and there I had 'Wolves!' painted up in great Russian capitals, so that few feminine eyes had the courage even to look at the signboard. And this is how it should be with them. For we do not wish them to be like us.

"I was trying to get out of that condition of the mind, into which I had been cast by a very few words, and still fewer glances from that lovely Princess Oria, whom I remembered as a very little maiden leading some procession, when I was a lad at Tiflis. If ever any boy has any heart to lose, when it ought to be gone upon play and mischief, mine had taken a sally out of me at sight of that young darling, trying to walk in a stately manner as she had been instructed, and resolute to bring her soft innocent self to the stiffness of the great occasion. How I had longed to lift her up among them and shout – 'This is your Queen, if you had a spark of courage. Behold the pink eagle on her shoulder!'

"But now it was a very different thing. The duty of an officer in trust was laid upon me, and if the men of Georgia would not stand up for their race, what had any outer tribe to do with it? The main point before me was to conquer foolish yearnings, and behave as a figure made of steel and leather. And without the interference of that glittering little governess, the rapture and the anguish of my life would not have been.

"I came down the narrow pass one evening towards dusk, to see to the posting of the sentinels, and to receive any message from the ladies, concerning their welfare and their general ideas; for they were beginning to write very craving letters and entreaties that would move a heart of stone, to husbands and fathers who were made of money, to rescue them from this seclusion. All these we forwarded, and Shamyl calculated that every letter would be worth to us a thousand roubles on the average. But money was not in my thoughts at all, and even the sense of duty fled, when I saw through the bars not the French woman only, but a figure very closely veiled, and endeavouring not to be seen in the twilight of a rock.

"'Poor little soul! She will die, she will die;' said the lady from Paris, with a very light sigh, as if with the thought that we must all do that. 'Those fat Princesses, what is it then? They are punishing her to the death. Poor little one! But why do I speak to Monsieur the Commander? Monsieur the Commander will rejoice in that occurrence, because the poor little one is not endowed with gold. Alas, it is so everywhere, except in France!'

"'Young lady, allow me to enter. It is my place to see to the safety of you all. I have not entered after sundown hitherto. But stand aside, lady, or you may be harmed.'

"She saw that I would break the gate open at a thrust, – for we allowed them to lock themselves in at night. 'Monsieur the Commander, how imperious he is!' she exclaimed with a wicked smile, as she turned the key. I thanked her, and then put my arm across the passage as the other young lady seemed about to fly. 'Pardon, fair Princess, but I cannot have it thus,' I said, with an attempt to look official; 'I am not your warder only, but your guardian. You trusted yourself to my care that night. A thousand Shamyls shall not take you from me. Can you not trust yourself to me again? Have I given you reason to regret it? I have longed to be with you every moment; but have I ever dared to approach you?' I spoke in her native language, which was very delightful to her ears after so much Russian.

"'Speak then with good courage, thou silly child. Tell the brave Commander all the insults piled upon thee by the proud and fat Princesses. Alas, good Heaven, there they are calling me again! Who would not think that I was born to be their slave? Brave Commander, the time is now for thee.' With these words away ran Mademoiselle de J – .

"Then Oria spoke, without shrinking from me, and her voice was as clear as the melody of a river when the Winter has released it, and the Spring is on its banks.

"'Sûr Imar, thou hast been very good to me. If I placed no confidence in such a kind defender, never could I hope to be defended any more. But now I am safe among all these great ladies; I am not one of those who shriek at every shadow.'

"'To that I can bear witness,' I answered very softly, to remind her of the night when she lay upon my horse; 'but what can I do, if the Princess will not trust me?'

"At this gentle reproach all her generous nature sprang forth, like the sun in a tempest. She threw aside her veil, and came close to me, and was not afraid to fix her eyes on mine. 'Sûr Imar, is that faith enough?' she asked, as she gave me her soft hand long enough to last for many an hour of dreaming. 'It is all I can ask for the present,' I replied, and she turned away her face, but not her form.

"Fearing to bring her into contumely among her proud companions, whose voices we could hear not far away, I retired from the gate with the proper martial tread; but not before I had obtained her promise to meet me on the morrow at the foot of the winding passage into the black wood; but she was not to venture up the path, until she saw me there; for truly there had been a wolf prowling near it, according to the children of the peasants. Therefore I had taken care to keep our golden ladies from risking ten thousand good crowns perhaps apiece to the cause of freedom (which they were ready to embrace, as soon as they knew both sides of it), by venturing into those gaunt and lonely shadows, where no man could hear them while being devoured.

"In this assurance I had every hope of treating confidentially the position of the Princess Oria; and if that desirable wolf would only form number three at the interview, who could say what might come of it? But even his youngest cub, if he had any, might have regarded me with contempt, if he had seen the condition I was in, while waiting for the footstep of my love; for they look at such matters in a less submissive way.

"Unworthy as I was of the joy I then attained, even the pleasure of remembering it would be justly taken from me, if I lowered it by any ordinary words. For any one else it seems enough to know that after some talk of affairs in general, and trifles we pretended to be full of, my beauty, my darling, my gift from Heaven, my own and my only love confessed – that I was as much to her as she could be to me."

* * * * * * * * * *

At this point, the Lesghian Prince became unable to proceed with his narrative. I felt that I should have been ten times worse, if I had won and then lost his daughter. So I grasped his strong hand, which was trembling not a little, and hoping that soft memories might subside to gentle sympathies, departed with my love for him increased, and my reverence not diminished. When I saw him next, he had gathered up his courage, and was a little ashamed of his own breakdown. And he tried to tell the rest of his sad story, as if it were the sorrow of a cousin or a comrade.

CHAPTER XXIV

IMAR'S TALE – PEACE

"Happiness appears to me to resemble the black eagle of the mountains more than the fair dove of the proverb. Restless and swift of wing, it flutters, scarcely long enough for a hover, over any home of ours, and even then too high for us to be sure that we have seen it. Not until it is gone, can we believe that it has been with us; and we know in our hearts that to look for it destroys the chance of seeing it.

"Shamyl was in a rage that Oria dared to pledge her faith to me, without consulting the 'Mountain-lion,' as his flatterers now called him. Whether he hoped to make money of her, or what other reason he may have had, I will not pretend to say. But when by means of my good service, and without the loss of a single man, he secured all those fair prizes, and thus recovered his favourite son, not to mention an excellent sum in cash, and good wives for some of his officers, the least he should have done in my opinion was to smile and pour his blessing upon the union of Oria and Imar. Instead of that, on the very day when the last of the Russian ladies left the lonely recesses of Darghi, he sent a score of his bodyguard, without even the courtesy of asking my consent, to escort the Princess Oria to his own headquarters.

"Bad breeding here made a great mistake, as it usually does among gentlemen. For if he had sent his orders to me, as the officer to whom he had intrusted the captives, I should have felt myself bound to obey him, however much against my liking. But being treated in this rough manner, which the Avar Chief was too fond of employing, I threw off at once my allegiance to him, – which was not that of a tribesman, and had been already encroached upon a little too uncouthly. For at present he was quite prosperous, and seemed well able to hold his own, – though the enemy had begun already their new plan of campaign, by which they prevailed in the end against him, – so that there could be no dishonour in leaving him with his glory. If the Russians had been pressing on him, I would not have quitted him; though nothing would have made me leave the Princess at his mercy. For when she confided herself to me, what things I said, and what vows I made, and what contempt I truly felt for every human being who thought lightly of such loftiness! Those officers who came with Shamyl's orders, were as faithful as could be to him; but ten times as many would not have availed to march my Oria eastwards.

"'This lady goes with me,' I said, 'she will be my wife in three days' time, just when you rejoin the camp. I will give you a letter to that effect to the inspired Commander. My men also will come with me; and if, as the General, he has any need of them hereafter, they will be at his service. You know that I do not speak in vain.'

"They all knew that, and many no doubt wished that they also were homeward bound. They went one way, and we the other; and the sons of gloomy Islam heard the songs of our rejoiceful faith borne back to them through the mountain passes, by the soft air from the west.

"For three or four years after that, I led a very peaceful life, happy in the perfect love of Oria, and the esteem of my faithful tribe. Being thoroughly versed in mountain war, we made ourselves respected by the badly armed and undisciplined races to the westward and the north of us. If they attempted an inroad, as their manner was, upon us, for their sakes we regretted it, but for our own were gratified. Because instead of plundering us of our honest crops and cattle, they always lost their thievish own; so that we grew very comfortable, and poverty was unknown among us. We sternly repressed all robbery, and to afford an abiding lesson to neighbours of lax principle, we deprived them of the means of outrage, placing these under our own control. At one time the numerous Osset tribes, far beyond Rukhan's rule, promised to join him in the plunder of our prosperity. But before they could mature their contradictory ideas, we passed with a chosen band through their only fruitful places, obtaining many specimens of things we cannot cultivate, and leaving them so much to talk of that they fell with one accord upon one another. So that they were compelled to send a humble petition to us for seed, as soon as the sun came back again.

"These little matters kept our arms from rusting, and our bodies from torpor. We injured no one who did not require it, and we taught them to abstain from injury. We encouraged literature in every village possessing two men who could read, and within ten miles of Karthlos Tower there were five or six poets growing. All this I mention not by way of vaunt, but to show how much can be accomplished, when the mind is easy.

"But alas before these great reforms had taken solid root with us, the final advance of the Russian forces hurried us to the war again. Shamyl, the gallant patriot, who had for a generation baffled the power of a boundless empire, was at last being crushed by weight of numbers, and worn out by perpetual blows. By forcing his scanty troops together, and closing the defiles around them, the stubborn invaders now had him in a grip, like a wolf blocked in his own den to starve. He called upon all who had shared his successes to help him in this last resource; and loth as I was to leave my happy home and peaceful villages, honour and good faith must not be starved by our prosperity.

"My sweet wife, who had never admired the great Captain as the Russian ladies did, prayed and wept and coaxed in vain; she brought my two children, the boy and the girl, to show me that I ought to think of more than mere abstractions. Innocent flesh of my own flesh, and tender bone of my own bone, and eyes more bright than any star in all the sky of glory, what had the 'Wolf of the mountains' done to make me love him more than these? I stood at the gate with my arm around her trembling form; and my beautiful boy, just three years old, clung to my leg and kissed my knee, and the little baby always wise, who now has come to be Dariel, looked at me through her mother's hair, with the sparkle of the brighter world babes come from still unquenched by earth. What was pride to me, or glory, if I could not find them here? But love has never yet sufficed to keep a man contented. He grows ashamed of living in it; and his manhood argues that if he lets his darlings wrap it all in warmth and softness, it will soon cease to be worth their care. I put my wife and children by, with a prayer to the Lord to protect them, and went to do my duty.

"How often I looked back, and thought – as all I loved grew further off – that a man's first duty is to those who cannot live without him. Moreover, that I should be punished for casting eyes upon and longing for stirring rather than steadfast life. Badly begun, and sadly ended, was to be the rule of it. At the outset thus our little band (familiar as they once had been with every twist of the mountain-chain and every tangle of the gorges) had managed, by living in peace so long, to get their memories confused. And even when they hit upon the way, they found it stopped by Cossack outposts at the very points that we used to guard. But after many a climb and crawl, we contrived to rejoin the brave Imaum.

"I was admitted to him at once, and saw by the weariness of his eyes, and the looseness of his attitude, that he knew it was all over. He was sitting at a table with the lamp behind him, and his shaggy head thrown backward, so that the light played down the furrows of his heavy forehead, as from below one sees the moon glistening down a wrinkled steep. With his usual scorn of ceremony he did not rise, but grasped my hand.

"'Imar, thou art a man,' he said, with his guttural voice, such as all the Avars have, now a little tremulous. 'If all had been as true as thou, I should not look like this to-night. It is Russian gold that has conquered us. To-morrow I surrender.'

"This was such a shock to me, that I could not reply immediately. Not that I cared for the cause of Islam, to which he had been devoted; neither did I detest the Russians, or dream that we, with so many races all at feud with one another, could ever form a nation. But I felt as any true man would feel, a reverence for this dauntless hero (who had held his own so long against resistless odds) and sorrow at the close of a career so grand.

"'I have fought a good fight. I have held the faith. I have not striven for my own glory, but in the cause of God most High. If it is His Holy will to forsake us, there is no more for man to do.'