VOICES OF THE VALLEY
In the calm air of the Sunday morning with the brook going gently by, I
came to the entrance of the hoary ruins wherein I had first seen Dariel.
A chapel with lines of grey flint only, to show where once the sacred
walls had risen, and nothing but the soft sky for roof, and mortar and
moss for pavement. Stepan, as big as a pulpit, but more mute, stood
close by expecting me, and led me along a ferny path, and dusted a stone
to sit upon, with a noble quietude. But when I asked him--"What am I to
do?" he took it for our national salutation, and answered "like a house
afire, sir." So I gave it up, and resolved to act according to the light
of nature, and the behaviour of the others when they arrived. Only if
there came a great procession of images, as I expected, nothing should
make me depart from the proper demeanour of a Briton.
However I was not called upon to assert the great Reformation. A more
simple, quiet, and impressive service I never witnessed anywhere; and
although there was no roof overhead, and little enclosure on either
side, the view of the sky, and the passing of the wind, and the sense of
antiquity around us were in harmony, as it seemed to me, with the
conditions of humility, and mortality, and hopefulness. The strictest
Puritan could have found fault with little except the red crosses worn
by all the congregation, and a few triangles and wreaths of white
flowers. And the man who can find any fault with these must consider
himself too faultless to worship any other being.
First came the women, only seven or eight in number, veiled not very
heavily, and cloaked in cheerful raiment. And the last of these was
Dariel, looking as if she had never dreamed of anything uncelestial,
while the loveliness of her figure gleamed through the folds of her
flowing mantle; even as the flexure and the texture of an agate glisten
through the cloudy pretext of their coat to hide them. "Who shall
understand these things?" thought I, "there is no one on earth fit to
approach her; yet the Lord cannot have meant her to be always by
herself." And then I thought of Hafer--Prince indeed! Prince of
darkness, and nothing else--and I looked about, with anything but
religious peace inside me. However I could perceive no sign of any
wickedness high or low; and every heart except my own sang a grateful
and worshipful tune to the Lord.
Even to me it was a quiet and devout proceeding, when Imar (not as one
who preaches to a crowd of animals below him, but like a man speaking to
and on behalf of men--not abject, though beneath a cloud) began the
simple offering of our love, and trust, and loyalty. To me it was
grander than it might have been to those who could criticise it; for I
could not object to anything, because I did not comprehend a word.
Nevertheless it did me good, inasmuch as it did the others good; and if
a man lives in himself alone, he will not find much good there, I fear.
And when they began their final hymn of high thanksgiving, and hopeful
trust that our Maker will not be as hard upon us as we are upon one
another, the sound of great rejoicing--which our Christians never
indulge in--filled the valley, and went up the heights, such as we are
bidden to gaze at, while we stick to the dismal hollows. I knew that I
was only of a dull prosaic order, but felt for the moment above myself,
with the other fellows lifting me.
However absurd it may appear to those who are always at one level of
self-made dignity and--something else--true it is we all were moved, as
no formality can stir us. Stepan had a mighty voice, and more than his
throat was in it; then Dariel cast by her veil, and her beautiful lips
were trembling, like a wild-rose quivering with petals half-open over
some melodious stream. I thought of the time when I had first beheld
her, and my love was not of this earth alone.
When all were gone, and I was thinking still what prigs we are, and
cowards too, who suppose that there is one way only of getting near our
Father, that humble man who had been our priest came up to me, and spoke
sadly. I saw that he was down at heart, and full of doubt about himself,
and wanting higher comfort than a man like me could give him. But I
could not guess, until he told his melancholy story, why he should be
thus downcast, after doing his utmost for the benefit of others. I had
not known what the service meant, but saw that it had been simple,
solemn, and free from all rant and false excitement; and this I ventured
to express.
"Come in, my friend, and have some refreshment. On Sundays all the men
dine together," he said as he led me inside the door, "and we will have
something with them. I fear that you found it difficult to keep from
laughing at the sight of such an astonishing set of hats, and scarcely
any two alike. We copied them first, I sometimes think, from our highest
and most fantastic peaks; but art has outdone nature. In truth they are
a motley lot, but there is not a false heart among them."
I had seen nearly all of them before, on the day of the police invasion,
but not as now in their best apparel, a strange and interesting sight.
Some of them had wondrous coats, frogged and braided, and painted and
patched, and ribboned and laced, and leathered, and I know not what,
with coins, and baubles, and charms, and stars, and every kind of
dangle; and two of them wore Russian uniforms far advanced in years, and
captured perhaps in the days of Shamyl. But their faces, though covered
with beards and freckles, could not be called savage or ignoble; and
though one or two bore a swarthy aspect, some were as fair as
Englishmen. I could well believe that there might be truth in the
tradition of their tribe, that they were a separate race, distinct among
the myriad mountain strains, having the hot oriental blood refreshed and
strengthened from the Western founts. They regarded their Chief with
patriarchal loyalty and deference, but no servility or cringing; it was
his pleasant duty to maintain them, and theirs to work for him, to a
rational extent. Whatever they had was his, so far as nature allows
such partnership; while his property enjoyed the privilege of
ministering to their welfare.
"They have done well," said the Chief to me, while I was revolving these
things slowly; and hoping that his daughter might appear at last to
grace the feast; "they will go and wander in their gardens now, and have
the pleasure of sitting in their native form."
"Which is something like that of a hare," I replied, without calling to
mind that it might seem rude; but he smiled, for he never took offence
unless it were intended, which is a most sagacious rule. And he
proceeded with his inference.
"The fact that they are coming without much pain to the use of chairs
and benches, when commended to them by a good dinner, tends to prove
that they are of a high and naturally docile race. But come to my room,
and have a glass of Kahiti; and then we will go forth into the wood, and
you shall know all that has come to pass in the life of a man not so
very old yet, but with all his best years behind him."
He smiled, and I looked at him still in his strength, still comely and
sweet of temper, a man with almost every gift of nature, but not endowed
with happiness. And his smile was not that of a jubilant heart, which
has tried and can trust its own buoyancy; but rather of the calm mind
which flows in, to level all the tumult, and to cover all the ruin. I
thought to myself that I must come to that, if Dariel went on, as she
seemed to do, and kept out of sight without a word to me.
But after a bottle of the Chief's light wine--a dozen of which would not
have turned a British hair--I had the presence of mind to fill my pipe
and pouch with some very fair tobacco of the mountains, and to follow
him over a clever little bridge of his own construction into the heart
of the grey old wood. There we sat upon a mossy log, and he poured out
his story, while the sunshine came in slants sometimes, and I wished
there had been more of it.
I cannot repeat Sûr Imar's tale with any of his self-commanding
strength, much less convey the light and shade of a voice alive with
memory of whatever the soul has suffered. However, to the best of my
belief, the import of his words is here. Feebly, but never falsely,
have I set down his remembrances. Only his foreign turns of language
have escaped my memory; and he must tell what he has to tell like an
ordinary Englishman. Which means without long words, whenever short ones
serve the turn as well.