THE LAND OF MEDEA
In the days of yore, whenever any new pestilence or distemper fell from
heaven upon the sons of men, the first thing to agitate the human mind
was a strong and bitter controversy. Chiron, the son of Philyra, and
Melampus of Amythaon, instead of attacking the common foe, fell
pell-mell upon one another, maintaining or spurning their various
doctrines--contagion, infection, epidemism, conduction by water, by
earth, by wind--until they were driven to run away headlong, or lie down
forever. Such questions surpass our understanding. But one malady there
is, contagious, infectious, endemic also as well as epidemic, grandly
contemptuous of pill and bolus, sticky as a limpet, while as slimy as a
slug, and the name of this blessed disease is--"The Blues." And the
beauty of it is, that everybody who has got it believes that he alone of
all the people in the neighbourhood is free from every atom of a symptom
of it.
As his luck, or perhaps mine, would have it, Strogue was in the blues,
when he came to Charing Cross. He received me with a grunt, and would
say nothing, except to be down upon the cabman, and the porters, and
shove his way along as if there were no English language. This is a very
useful way to go to work, whenever you can be quite certain that you are
the biggest fellow in the place, with no one to try to think otherwise.
But unless there is money right and left behind it, at a big railway
station it does not succeed.
"You are not among the niggers yet," I said, being always polite to
everybody, and indignant at not being allowed to speak, while his voice
rang along the glazing. But he deigned me no answer, not even a glance,
but shouted out "Third Class! Where the devil are you driving to? Have
you never seen the Chairman of this Line?" The porters were too
wide-awake to do anything but grin, and touch their caps ironically, and
then he said "First Class," whereupon they all believed him.
Not a word however would he say to me, though we had all the carriage to
ourselves at starting; so I took him at his humour, and went to the
other window, and drowned all my anxieties in "The Money Market."
Possibly his heart was heavy about the landlady of the "London Rock," or
the barmaid thereof, or the daughter of the Boots, if a maiden there
were in that capacity; or perhaps a traveller even so well-seasoned
could not bid adieu to his native land once more, without emotions
honourable to his head and heart alike. Then the contagion of his low
spirits began to spread around me, like the influenza vapour; and if he
had tried to talk, I should not have cared to answer.
Such tacit respect and mutual affability of silence do more to endear
two heavy-witted Britons to one another, than a folio of flippant words.
Strogue was kindly pleased with me, and I thought well of Strogue, when
our lofty regard for the sea-sick passengers, as we had a rolling time
of it, opened, as with one accord, the valves of communication. "Give us
a light, old chap," said the Captain, as he clapped me on the back;
"come out of the sulks, and talk a bit."
After all the temper he had shown, this was rather ludicrous; but I let
him put his own interpretation on it, for he was in this predicament for
my sake, quite as much as to please himself. But strange as it may seem,
we both avoided all important subjects, until the question of route
compelled us to consider them. Then I told him that money need not stop
us, only mine must be put into proper form in Paris; and then we
discussed the whole question.
It seems that he had ordered this sudden start by reason of something
that came to his knowledge only on the previous afternoon. In St. Paul's
churchyard he encountered quite by chance, according to his view of it,
a man well known through his travels in Central Asia, and most
interesting account of them. Strogue took him back to the "London Rock,"
and there entertained him hospitably, for a traveller has generally
acquired the power of feeding upon any wayside bench. By and by the two
great wanderers came to a subject pretty sure to be handled by them, but
never with unanimity. Strogue thought highly of the classic charms of
the fair Ionian ladies; but Sir Robert B. called them a brown and skinny
lot, and declared that there was not a girl of any Hellenic race fit to
walk beside a maiden he had seen at Athens, not more than a month ago,
and who was said to be of old Caucasian lineage. Knowing that the ladies
of the Caucasus are not much addicted to travel, the Captain began to
enquire into this, and although he had never met Dariel, and had seen
Sûr Imar at a distance only, his friend's account left him in no doubt
whatever that the pair he had been so vainly seeking, by letters to half
the capital towns of Europe, were in Athens at the end of February. Not
only did the description tally with all he heard from me and Nickols,
and that scoundrel of a Hafer, but also Sir Robert, while making
enquiries about the beautiful stranger, had been told by some facetious
Greek that she was worthily named indeed, the daughter of Himeros, of
love, of passion, of delight, and yearning. And again he had learned at
the hotel, where they were staying, that their journey to St. Petersburg
had been prevented, or at any rate deferred, through the extreme
severity of the winter surpassing any season within memory. This I could
well understand, for I knew Sûr Imar's dread of bad weather, not on his
own account but lovely Dariel's.
Father and daughter were still at the ancient centre of civilization,
when Sir Robert left it, and their intentions were unknown to him. But
he was inclined to think, from certain purchases which he saw them
making, that they were more likely to be on their way home than to
proceed to Russia now, and if so there could be little doubt that they
would make their way first to Constantinople. Therefore it seemed to be
our proper course, though beset with much doubt and perplexity, to
betake ourselves at the utmost speed to the Turkish capital, and try to
intercept them there, or if too late for that, to follow them. For
everything now would depend upon time. In a few more weeks the golden
sun would have captured the mountain parapets, and begin to swing open
with summer light the bars of the steepest citadels; and then if Sûr
Imar were a day before us, what chance of overtaking him? And his foes
were not likely to hold much parley, when once they found him in their
hands.
Out upon it! Who could imagine such a crime overlooked by the Power that
rules the world? A loyal confidence possessed me for a while, that
Heaven would protect its noblest produce, the few who ever think of
looking up to it, from the venom of its abject spawn.
"It will never do to take it in that light," said Strogue, though he
always attributed his own escapes, which had been manifold as well as
narrow, to celestial perception of his merits; "no, you must never trust
to that cock's fighting. Sometimes it will, and sometimes it won't. And
where are you then without your revolver? And one thing you overlook
altogether; setting aside all holy motives--which those fellows take
revenge to be--when a savage wants your property, does he dwell upon
your character?"
"Then they ought to be all exterminated. What are the lives of a
thousand savages, in comparison with that of one great good man, who
lives only for their benefit?"
"If you kill them, what good can he do them?" Strogue asked, being
always more captious than logical. "Imar is in front of his age; and the
age makes martyrs of fellows of that kind and leaves the future to make
saints of them, if their ghosts turn up, within memory. Our business is
to act, and not to argue. Now look to your luggage, my boy, and the most
important part of it is firearms."
So we took our course along the chord of Europe by abominably slow
lines, whenever there were any; and at last without any line at all. It
gave an Englishman the tingles to see everybody crawling, as if time
were a tortoise with the gout, and the hours the produce of a coprite
beetle, which he slowly travels backward to bury. The slowest man on our
farm, after eating two days' dinner, was a swallow with a nest to feed,
compared to any one I saw throughout the east of Europe.
There was a little more vigour at Constantinople, and plenty of fellows
with fine pegs to stir, if they could only see the use of it. But as for
any briskness, and punctuality, and eagerness to get a job and do it,
the loafer who stands by the horse-trough on the green in any Surrey
village would have his hands out of his pockets and stand on his head,
before their eyes were open. And yet we are told every day of our lives
that it serves the British farmer right to starve, because he has no
activity!
We had spent two days without any possibility of avoiding it in Paris,
and but for Strogue it would have taken me twice as long to make the
needful arrangements; and now we lost four days in the City of the
Sultan, making search for our friends in all probable quarters, and
procuring what was indispensable. Without obtaining any further clue, we
set forth on the 10th of April, by a poor little steamer very badly
found, for a place called Poti at the mouth of the Rion, one of the four
chief rivers of the Caucasus, formerly known as the Phasis, whence the
bird, whose lustre shames the glories of the golden fleece.
Strogue had shown in very early days the quick force of his genius by
running away from school, and defying pursuit, and beginning earnest
life in a wherry. "You are picking up the lingoes very smart," he said,
as we churned the muddy waters; "but I can't stand affectation, George,
and I won't have the old Ark called the _Argo_. Besides, she never came
here in her life; she drew a deal too much water. She went to pieces on
Ararat, I tell you, and Satan took her upper deck and put it on top of
Elbruz. Why? Why, that people might go against the Bible, as they are
only too glad to get an excuse to do. And he put about a story that she
grounded upon Elbruz, which she could not have done from the shape of
it. No, no. Holy Writ is what I stick to, and as long as I do that, the
Lord will always stick to me. I won't hear another word about it."
However, though he would not have the Argo even mentioned, he made no
objection to the golden fleece; in fact he confirmed it, having seen
some gold in the upper waters of the Rion; and as for Medea, when I told
him all her story, her treachery, incantations, murder of her brother
and even her own babes, he became quite excited, and vowed that she must
have come to life again as the Princess Marva. Upon that I begged him to
tell me all he knew about that extraordinary lady, for I had never
understood from her brother's description that her nature was
particularly fierce and unforgiving, though she certainly behaved in a
cold and distant manner, when she informed him that his wife was gone.
But that might arise from nothing more than the sense of the wrong she
herself had received through her faithless husband Rakhan. And would a
ruthless woman feel such emotion at the casualty to another person's
child?
"Not knowing, can't say," the Captain answered in his favourite short
style; "but you must remember that I have not heard that story as he
told it. And another thing, he was not there to see it; for he was far
away settling that other fellow's hash,--and his own too by being in
such a blessed hurry. But I have got a very shrewd suspicion, my boy;
you will laugh at it, I dare say, and there certainly are some things
that pretty nearly knock it on the head. What do you say to this?
Suppose it was her own child that was killed, and that she contrived to
change them, fearing that she would never have another, and so would
lose her position altogether. For among those Ossets, as I have been
told, the childless wife of the chief must eat humble-pie at every
corner, and is apt to be superseded after six or seven years. And she
might have other motives too for getting Imar's heir into her
possession."
"The idea is ingenious, but most improbable," I replied after thinking
for a moment. "Not that she could not have done it, for there was no one
to observe her, except her own nurse, whom she could easily silence. But
her own conduct now proves that it cannot have been so. Shows that she
had not gone for that game, I mean. They may be a lawless lot, everybody
says so; but even your Medea would never send a man to marry his own
sister."
"I hope not. It is too horrible to think of. Though it might be part of
her hideous scheme for revenge. I tell you, Cranleigh, it is but a very
stale thing to say, that a woman of the lowest depth of woman's
wickedness is as far beneath any man's deepest pitch, as a good woman is
above his highest stretch. I don't go by what they tell you in the
books. I have seen a big lot of men and women--civilized as they call
themselves, and savage; the latter on the whole more trustworthy; and
you know that I never dogmatise. Only a fool does that: and though I am
an ass very often, especially when I yield to my feelings about right
and wrong, you can't call me altogether a fool--now can you?"
"Captain Strogue," I answered warmly, perceiving that he asked for it,
"fools are always numerous enough. But if you are one, I wish that they
were universal." And in saying this I was no hypocrite.
"There is not such a thing as a wise man now," he proceeded, after one
quick glance, which showed that he liked my testimony. "We don't want
them. They would never suit the age; and so the Lord abstains from
sending them. The two or three last, who pretended to come, spent all
their energy in scolding, which shows that they were not the proper
stuff. But about this Medea--is that all you have got to say, to show
that she is not trying on this little game?"
"No. I have a much stronger argument than that. No one could imagine for
a moment that Sûr Imar, the most benevolent man on earth, could be the
father of a hateful, spiteful, low-minded scoundrel, such as Hafer is."
"You have put it fairly. No one would imagine it; and therefore it is
the very thing that may be true. I am not a scholar; but such things
have been, and will be again, while the world endures. From bodily
likeness you may reason more than from the greater things you cannot
see. I have never seen Imar close at hand; but they are both tall,
strong men, straight, well-built, and active. Imar is fair you say, and
Hafer dark. That proves nothing."
"It is a vile idea, and I will not listen to it," I replied, with some
inward sense of outrage on our race; "I have never seen Hafer for a
close examination, and am not sure that I could swear to him, if he
stood before me now. But from the glimpses I have had of him, I know
this--he is as different from the grand Sûr Imar, as a blackberry bush
is from a Muscat vine."
"Yet the one may be grafted on the other, I believe. The difficulty is
not concerning that, George Cranleigh; the difficulty is about the
woman's motives. Prove that it would suit her purposes to bring such a
horrible affair about, and the horror of it is no obstacle to the fact.
What makes me doubt my own suggestion is, that I cannot see how the
scheme would work for the benefit of Madame Marva. All other objections
on the score of human nature, or what human nature ought to be, are as
nothing to the will of such a woman. Remember that she has a double
object--to make herself the Queen of both the tribes, and to avenge her
husband's death."
Wicked, and ruthless, and inhuman, as the sister of that lofty and
noble-minded man might be, I could not bring myself to believe her
capable of any such horrible design. But the misery, agony, and anxiety
for the pure and innocent Dariel, and her father already so cruelly
tried by the dark decree of Heaven, also my deep and abiding fury at
bloodthirsty treachery, and the terror of being too late for the rescue,
all together these drove me to the verge of madness, when the rotten old
hulk they called a steamer yawed to this side and to that, and quivered,
and rattled, and groaned, and the decrepit engines panted, and the
craven crew fell upon their knees and wept; and it was announced in
three languages, that we had done miracles of daring, and must tempt the
Lord no longer, but thank Him for saving us from our own valour. The
Rion was in such high flood that we must cast anchor, and wait for three
days outside the Bar, till the rush of snow-water subsided.