IMAR'S TALE--EXILE
"You understand from what I said, that my only son was gone as well, the
eldest born of our fervent love, to whom with a pleasant conceit I had
given the name of 'Origen,'--born of Oria. The other was named from the
place of her own birth, arriving unexpectedly, when we went in the
troika to see the great post-house just built by the Russians on their
grand new road, which cuts the great mountain-chain beneath the towering
peak of Kazbek.
"Unnatural it may seem, and sluggish, and even an abject thing to those
who have never lost their courage; but when I was carried up the steps
of Karthlos, with the body of my wife on the other litter, and the
carpenter ordered to remember my length in the boards he was cutting out
for her,--for we are a thrifty race, holding fast the hide when we have
lost the horns,--and I managed to say at my own threshold--'Let me see
my babies'; behold there was only one brought to me, and she could not
walk, nor say 'Dadda,' as babies of every language do.
"Nevertheless, without excuse, she took my liking as of right, lying so,
and smiling at me with the faith of baby eyes, and the beginning of a
clever nose, and pink lips parted like a berry, as if I had a breast for
her.
"'Sweetie, it is thy father, not thy mother,' the woman who bore her
said, 'and if he hath no breast for thee, his heart shall be all the
nigher. Sûr Imar, this is all the Lord hath left thee for thy home and
heart. Gather thy life up, for her sake.'
"I saw the likeness of her mother in her, and she came into my helpless
arms, and laid her soft face in my beard, and played with the bandage
round my wound. And they say that she spoke her first word thus; but
women must not be trusted, when their imaginations move them.
"As soon as I was able to think more clearly, I asked for my boy,
Origen. They told me, as soon as they thought it safe, that on the
second day after my departure, the very day of my fatal deeds, the poor
little fellow, scarce three years old, was killed through his own high
courage. My sister, who reigned in the Castle now, had given orders that
he should be kept apart from her own child Hafer, and in the top rooms,
where the nursery was with a separate staircase to it. Perhaps she
desired that even in childhood there should be no acquaintance between
the offspring of Oria and her own. But my little Orry was as strong and
active as an average child of twice his years, and he could not endure
to be cooped up thus. He contrived to get out of a loop-hole, and thence
to the head of the outer staircase, and so upon the table-cliff behind
the house, where he ran frolicking among the snow. This rock is
perpendicular upon all its southern face, and the dumb child Hafer,
seeing Orry's delight, ran out to share it from a lower door, while his
mother was away upon some business, with only two trusty servants.
"Soon one of our women heard my boy shouting, and laughing at the other
child who could not shout; and instead of tempting them in with a
sweetmeat, the thoughtless girl ran after them. Of course they ran away,
and before she could catch them, both vanished over the brink of the
cliff, where a crest of snow obscured it; and verily she was afraid to
go back to the house, and tell what she had done. She concealed herself
behind the corner, and left others to find out the loss. But it was not
very long unknown, for Marva was coming along the ravine upon her return
to Karthlos, in the teleka which had brought her first, and which she
kept at the posting-house. She saw the two children lying there after
their fall of two hundred feet, her own child unhurt in a pile of snow,
and my little darling on the rocky floor, with his poor head dashed to
pieces.
"For her bitter turn against me, I forgave her, when I heard of her
tenderness to my poor child. It is at such times that the greatness of
a woman's nature shows itself. Happily she knew not as yet of my
encounter with her husband, which must have been taking place just then,
but forgetting all her grievances against me she took both little ones
into her carriage, and drove at all speed to the posting-house. There
she ordered a private room, and allowed no one to come near them, except
her own Baboushka, while she sent to a village five miles off for the
only doctor to be heard of. He came as soon as he could, but she had
abandoned all hope by that time, as any but a woman must have done long
since, and there was no one to receive him. For Marva had sent her own
child home in dread of the effect upon his little brain, and at night
she appeared at the gate of Karthlos, with the baby heir cold as a stone
in her arms. His pretty red cross, and his green velvet dress, and above
all the billows of his golden hair still flowing from the linen swathes
of Death--when the women saw these they bewailed the child of Imar and
of Oria, almost as if they had lost their own. Before my return, he was
buried in our little churchyard of the glen; and his mother lies beside
him.
"I have told you a melancholy tale; but when the Lord has tried one
child beyond His other children, and almost beyond the strength
vouchsafed to the best of them to bear it, something good shall be yet
in store; and happiness may spring up again, though pleasure be but a
memory. And the soul that has passed through rough affliction and the
long cold shadow, is led more kindly into the paths of shelter, and
content with quietude.
"I have done enough of harm, my friend. I have broken up two households;
I have wasted half my tribe in war, and slain a good few Russians. These
you may slay by the thousand, without checking the supply of them; you
are only guilty of their blood, and the tears of those who loved them.
But my own losses taught me what it is to make others desolate. And the
rest of my life, please God, shall go to redeem the wrongs of wrath and
war."