Then only the sacred awe which held them spellbound was lifted from the souls of these men, yielding to a commotion unheard of, even among that savage people--in their "general a.s.sembly" at least. Every man seemed ready to attack his neighbour; it was a tumult unspeakable, and some time pa.s.sed before one voice succeeded in making itself heard above the rest. It was that of the corporal. "Stop him!" he roared. "He is a rebel, I will make him a prisoner in the Emperor"s name. You must help me, all of you. Jewgeni, what is the good of your being judge?" He was not left alone this time, some dozen of old soldiers rallying round him.
But the rest of the men indignantly opposed him. "We are no policemen!"
chirped the infant voice of the herculean smith. "No policemen!" echoed the people.... "Let him go in peace!... He has addressed the general meeting, and has a right to go free."
"In the name of the Emperor!" reiterated the corporal, white with rage, and, s.n.a.t.c.hing a pistol from the belt of his nearest neighbour, he pointed it at the men, "Let me do my duty, or woe to your lives!"
"Woe to yourself!" cried Wa.s.silj, the butcher, brandishing his axe in the would-be hero"s face; and blood would certainly have flowed had not the judge interfered, an unwonted courage coming to him from the urgency of the situation.
"Do you know this sign?" he cried, thrusting his staff of office between them. "There is power vested in it; this is the general meeting, and I command you, desist!" And the combatants owned his authority, Wa.s.silj dropping his axe and the corporal his pistol.
Taras, meanwhile, surrounded by his little band, attempted to break through the ranks; it was not so easy, for the people pressed round him, endeavouring to hold him, and discoursing wildly. But far harder to the parting man was the sorrowful entreaty of his friends. Alexa Sembrow, the late elder, had fallen on his knees before him, his white hair framing an agonised face. "Don"t Taras, for G.o.d"s sake, don"t do it!" he kept repeating, while old Simeon bethought himself of another means, haply, to stop him. He was pressing to the inn to bring hither poor a.n.u.sia. Father Leo alone looked on with folded arms, his face quivering, his lips unable to move.
He was the only one for whom Taras yet had a word; turning to him with deep emotion, he said: "Forgive me, thou best of friends, forgive my silence, and my grieving thee now so sorely. Thou hast loved me truly, I know!"
That was too much for Leo; he lay weeping in the arms of his friend.
"Alas," he sobbed, "what a man is lost in you!"
"Not so!" replied Taras, disengaging himself gently. "He who obeys the dictates of his own true heart cannot be lost, happen what may--at least not in the eyes of the just ones...." He turned away, stopping once again: "Father Leo," he said, below his breath, so that the priest only could understand him, "Father Leo, will you promise me one thing?"
"Surely. What is it? About your wife?"
"Nay; I require no promise on her account, for I know your heart. It is about--myself--when one day--my last hour shall have come--may I send for you? Will you come to me--to any place?--no matter how terrible it be?"
"I shall come," faltered the pope.
"Do you pledge me your word ... to any place?"
"Wherever it be."
"Thank you for all your friendship--for this last proof most of all...."
He turned away hastily, whispering to Jemilian, "Are the horses ready?"
"Yes; behind the church, as you commanded. Young Halko has saddled them, and is waiting your orders."
"Then let us be gone."
But one more wrench before he could be free. The sons of Simeon, Hritzko, and Giorgi, had caught his knees.
"Take us with you," they cried; "we cannot--we will not let you go without us!"
"Get up!" he cried, sharply; and there was no gainsaying his voice, hoa.r.s.e though it was with emotion. "Do you think I am villain enough to ruin the sons of my friend?" Adding, with a quivering smile: "You are quite incorrigible. What was the use of my resisting your importunity before? But love me always, and remember me when I am gone. You are dear to me. Good-bye!"
He walked away, and none stopped him. Having mounted, he was about to spur his horse, when once again his name was called with a shriek so heartrending that he shuddered and paused.
He knew who was calling him. His unhappy wife was standing outside the inn, looking after him with despairing eyes. She would have fallen to the ground had not old Simeon supported her trembling figure.
"Farewell!" faltered Taras; but the sound did not reach her, falling dead at his own feet as it were.
He could but wave his hand, and, spurring his horse mercilessly, the creature dashed away in a maddened gallop, his men following; and the little band vanished in the mysterious shadows of the fir-covered uplands.
CHAPTER X.
TO THE MOUNTAINS.
There is a strange legend concerning the origin of the Carpathians, which, now towering abruptly, now rising in gentler lines, form a mighty wall of separation between the rich lowlands where the Theiss flows and that vast plain, of heath-country diversified with fertile tracts, stretching away southward beyond the Pruth into Roumania. To those blue-green domes cling the gathering clouds, and sailing away thence they burst in storms of rain upon the Magyar or upon the Ruthen, as the capricious winds may list; and in those forest-haunts the rivers rise which come down from the heights, headlong at first and wondrously clear, but flowing wearily as they reach the plain. The dwellers round about differ in race and tongue; but they look to the mountains as to a common centre, where the weather is born, and whence the water is given for the lowlands; and common to all is that quaintest of legends, whether Slav, or Magyar, or Roumanian--a legend crudely imagined, but not without a meaning of its own, however fancifully expressed.
There was a good old time, the people will tell you, at the beginning of things, when the earth was a fair garden, a fertile plain, with pleasant groves here and there, and gentle hills. There were no mountains, no ravenous beasts, no thunder storms, no bursting waters, and the people were of one race and tongue. Men were happy in those far-off times--tilling the soil, and living on the fruits of this beautiful plain. And G.o.d would visit the garden He had made, and bless the children of men. But these foolish people were not content, and, uniting in their pride, they clamoured for golden harvests without previous toil; in punishment whereof the Lord G.o.d ceased to visit them, confounding their language so that they could no longer clamour in common, and permitting, moreover, a mighty barrier to be raised between them--the great Carpathians--to separate them into different tribes.
For the enemy of men was sent to raise the mountains, and to make them terrible withal. The heaving earth burst upward, and there were peaks and crags to frown at the discontented race. The evil one took seven days to shape the Carpathians, beginning on a Sunday, on which he heaped up the most towering parts, and finishing off with the lesser Carpathians on the seventh day when his power was nearly spent; that was Sat.u.r.day, for which reason no doubt this part has always been a dwelling-place of Jews.
The mountain range of seven divisions, as is plainly to be seen, was of awful aspect, since the evil had the making of them: not a tree or green thing would grow to clothe the riven rocks and the peaks he had raised to spread terror upon the once smiling plain. For the Lord G.o.d had been wroth with men.
But there was One in heaven, the good Saviour, who prayed His Father not to be angry for ever, but to let Him add beauty to the mountains which the evil one had made for the punishment of men.
He went, and at His touch the whole range was changed, not losing its dread gloominess, yet gaining a wondrous beauty over and above. For the Saviour with His pitiful hand covered the bare mountains with the grandest forests ever seen, surrounding the rocks with spreading verdure, and planting flowers at their feet. He made waters to spring in every glen, and cascades leap from the crags; and though wolves and bears went prowling, He created sheep and the dappled deer to browse in the sylvan haunts. And ever since, the people will tell you, the Carpathians have had a beauty of their own, but with terror combined.
It is hardly to be imagined how a man would feel who, by some magic, were to find himself suddenly transplanted into the heart of these mountains. For unmoved he could not be, were his perceptions never so blunted; a sensation of awe would steal upon him with something of wonder and dismay. Nay, such a feeling must come upon any wanderer ascending step by step from the lowlands, though the gradual rise would prepare him in a measure for the weird grandeur and stern beauty unrolling before his eyes.
To such a one the range at first would appear as a gigantic ridge of clouds heaped up on the horizon, but differing in hue according to the time of day; of a bluish black in the morning, they fade into shades of grey, transparently pale in the full daylight, till the sinking sun suffuses them with a crimson blush, and they continue shining through the long twilight like a wall of fire at the far end of the dusky plain. But the following morning those same shapes are black again, and all the darker if the air be clear--a wall of towering density jutting its pinnacles into the ethereal blue.
They seem approaching, but the vast plain is delusive; they are yet miles away. The landscape, however, has left monotony behind, growing more changeful at every turn. The moorland has disappeared, with its sedgy pools, instead of which there is an abundance of rivulets, growing more limpid and more headlong as you proceed; for you are ascending steadily, your horizon enlarging. Cornfields are few and far between, wheat making room for the more hardy oats; while all about you there are great tracts of brownish uplands, where juniper bushes are plentiful and the heather will burst into sheets of bloom. Villages are becoming scarce--mere hamlets, too poor for a manor house, too poor almost for a church, and with cottages of the humblest, the public-house alone retaining its undesirable dimensions. Orchards are no longer to be seen, but beech woods increase; the forest encloses you, and soon even the beech is crowded out by the fir. The sky, wherever it appears through the jagged branches, is of a deeper blue, for there are no misty vapours here as in the lowlands; but the air is filled with a strange, crisp perfume, the resinous exhalations of pine wood. Every sense thus is alive to the change of scenery, and if you are a lover of your lowland home, despite its dreariness, you will be overtaken by a haunting sensation of fear of the unknown world you have entered.
But emerging from the pine wood presently, and looking back from the height you have gained, the very plain behind you has a.s.sumed another aspect, a strange loveliness enwrapping it. The old homely expanse is aglow with an emerald hue--a giant meadow seemingly--streaked with the silver of its flowing waters; a shining greensward, the brighter for its cottages; and far yonder, where the blue of the heavens seems mingling with the green of the earth, your own dwelling perchance, a fair jewel in a radiant setting.
But the far-off wall, with its towering blackness? It has resolved itself magically. To your right and to your left, and above you, there are round-domed mountains and bolder peaks rising atop of one another to an immeasurable height. That path up the pine wood has brought you into the heart of the Carpathians, and their strange beauty, weird and wild and unspeakably mysterious, is upon you suddenly.
Yet monotony is even here; the world seems a sea of swaying pines, and the eye has nothing to rest it from the gloomy green save the sky, vast and blue. The heart grows lonely and wistful, but scarcely attuned to tender thoughts as amid the voices of the plain. The spell of the forest wilds is upon it, bracing it up to its own sterner kind.
Resistless and tossing, each torrent dashes through its rocky glen, breaking into clouds of spray about the boulders, and mantling the young pines in a shower of shining drops. And from the forest deeps strange music is heard of groaning branches and whispering tree tops, now wild and solemn, now murmuring as in dreams, never ceasing, but going on for ever like the song of the sea. And as you listen you are caught in a trance, and drawn deeper still into the witching region.
Nature here does not captivate by little gifts and graces; but, having looked at you once with eyes of kindling beauty, wild, weird, and awful, you worship at her feet.
It is a charm both chaste and powerful, and, having known it once, you seek to know more. But not many are admitted to that delight, which is still reserved for the few--even as in the days when Taras Barabola repaired up yonder to unfurl his banner. Yet occasionally some lover of the wilder aspects of nature will quit the sh.o.r.es of the Theiss or the Fruth to seek entrance into the enchanted regions of that unknown world. The forest wilds of the Welyki Lys to this day are given over to bears, hajdamaks, and Huzuls, and the lowland folk aver that there is little to chose between either. But that is a libel.
Even a bear up yonder is as good-natured as a bear can be, not having made the closer acquaintance of man. A hunter by nature, he hates being hunted, and grows surly in consequence; nay, it must be owned that in the more inhabited parts he has quite lost his native _bonhomie_, growing cunning and spiteful, robbing more than his need, and killing for mere blood-thirstiness. Not so, however, up among the wilds. He is lord in possession there; behaving, accordingly, with a pride of his own, and not without generosity. Of course he will have his daily tribute, and fetches it too--now from this fold, now from that; but the shepherds and herdsmen quite understand this. There is no help against the lord of the soil, they say; but the bear, on the whole, is at least a convenient landlord, fetching himself what he wants, and not expecting you to carry it after him. Not fiercely as a robber, therefore, nor stealthily as a thief; but leisurely and with dignity, Master Bruin arrives at the pen, picks out his victim--the sheep, goat, or calf which takes his fancy--and walks away with it as quietly and unconcernedly as he came. And he behaves most fairly, not oppressing one unfortunate subject more than another, but visiting in succession all the pens and folds within a certain radius of his lair; so that he may be looked for at pretty regular intervals. The herdsmen have an idea that he acts from a positive sense of justice; while others, less credulous, are of opinion that the bear of the Carpathians is a great walker, and thus naturally finds himself now in this quarter, now in that, turning to the nearest sheep-fold when it is time for his dinner.
That the queer biped he meets occasionally might also serve him for a meal, he generously ignores. If he falls in with a herdsman, he gives a growl: "With your leave, brother, there is room for us both." He growls too, though more angrily, on meeting any stranger, but rarely thinks it worth while to attack him; and if he comes across any one asleep he will have a sniff at him, but without a thought of hurting.
While the wolf, that low, ugly creature, is hated and hunted down everywhere, a strange feeling of respect prevents any native of the upper mountains from killing a bear. "The poor little father has none too easy a life of it," they say, "and it is not well to murder an honest fellow." There is a tale preserved in the forest of an Englishman who once arrived there with the notion of bear-hunting. But although he had muskets of wrought silver, and held them out as presents to any who would help him, not many were found wicked enough to join in the chase. "Indeed," say the people, "all who went were frozen to death, the bad Englishman first and foremost. It served him right for wishing to hunt the poor little father." The very outlaw, the homeless hajdamak, shares this feeling; and hunting for the pleasure of it, whatever he falls in with in the lower forest regions, he acts peaceably in the upper haunts. "We go shares with the bear up here," he says, "and he behaves well to us."
The Huzul also, that hybrid of Slavonic and Mongolian blood, who lives up yonder as a herdsman, hunting the wolf and the deer, and tilling such bits of ground as he can, is not nearly so bad as he is believed to be by his betters in the lowlands. His one great vice is an ingrained want of morality, his own share, handed down from his fathers, of original sin.
His ancestors, drifting away from the great wave of migration, unused to a settled home and personal property, knew neither Christianity nor the wedded estate. Their descendant has accepted all these fetters of lawlessness, but he wears them lightly, according to his nature. He has submitted to a settled dwelling, having a hut of his own, but he will not live in it except when he cannot help himself. From the time the snow begins to melt, until it lies again mountains deep for seven months in the year, the Huzul moves about with his cattle from pasture to pasture, from glen to glen, as though driven, not only by outward necessity, but also by a mysterious inward need. While the world is green--winter to him being the black time--he is never long on the soil of his own property. He must return at times to till his field, to sow and reap his oats--the hardest and most unwelcome of labour; he _must_ do it, else he would die for want of food, but he never thinks of adding to his wealth by means of agriculture. Every lamb rejoices his heart, and he is proud of his foals; but if he enlarges his oat-field, it is only because of the downright necessity of meeting his wants, and nothing beyond.
Neither is he greatly advanced in his notions of personal property. To be sure there are certain fields, and pastures, and flocks, belonging to certain settlements, these consisting of three or four, sometimes even of ten or twelve families of the same kindred, and united under one head who rules by birthright. This chief appoints the sowing of the fields and the management of the sheep, but not a grain of oats, nor solitary lambkin belongs to him any more than to another. It is all common property. Indeed, there are even pastures and flocks which are the joint property of several settlements, so that a single lamb may happen to belong to several hundred owners. Such property is managed, and the proceeds are allotted at the meeting of the married men, who, though of different settlements, are yet related to one another; for such common ownership always springs from the fact that their forefathers formed one family, which, growing too large, had divided for want of s.p.a.ce. There is no personal property then, save wearing apparel and arms; everything else belongs to the family, which means to the clan. The student of political economy, it will be seen, could enrich his knowledge among the Huzuls!