University of Virginia Library

XII

"BUT enough! It is time for me to pray," said Hadji Murád, drawing from an inner breast-pocket of his Circassian coat Vorontsóv's repeater watch and carefully pressing the spring. The repeater struck twelve and a quarter. Hadji Murád listened with his head on one side, repressing a childlike smile.

"Kunák Vorontsóv's present," he said, smiling.

"It is a good watch," said Lóris-Mélikov. "Well then, go thou and pray, and I will wait."

"Yakshí. Very well," said Hadji Murád, and went to his bedroom.

Left by himself, Lóris-Mélikov wrote down in his notebook the chief things Hadji Murád had related; and then lighting a cigarette, began to pace up and down the room. On reaching the door opposite the bedroom, he heard animated voices speaking rapidly in Tartar. He guessed that the speakers were Hadji Murád's

murids, and, opening the door, he went in to them.

The room was impregnated with that special leathery acid smell peculiar to the mountaineers. On a búrka spread out on the floor sat the one-eyed red-haired Gamzálo, in a tattered greasy beshmét, plaiting a bridle. He was saying something excitedly, speaking in a hoarse voice; but when Lóris-Mélikov entered he immediately became silent, and continued his work without paying any attention to him.

In front of Gamzálo stood the merry Khan Mahomá, showing his white teeth, his black lashless eyes glittering, saying something over and over again. The handsome Eldár, his sleeves turned up on his strong arms, was polishing the girths of a saddle suspended from a nail. Khanéfi, the principal worker and manager of the household, was not there; he was cooking their dinner in the kitchen.

"What were you disputing about?" asked Lóris-Mélikov, after greeting them.

"Why, he keeps on praising Shamil," said Khan Mahomá, giving his hand to Lóris-Mélikov. "He says Shamil is a great man, learned, holy, and a dzhigit."

"How is it that he has left him and still praises him?"

"He has left him, and still praises him," repeated Khan Mahomá, his teeth showing and his eyes glittering.

"And does he really consider him a saint?" asked Lóris-Mélikov.

"If he were not a saint the people would not listen to him," said Gamzálo rapidly.

"Shamil is no saint, but Mansúr was!" replied Khan Mahomá. "He was a real saint. When he was Imám the people were quite different. He used to ride through the aouls, and the people used to come out and kiss the him of his coat and confess their sins and vow to do no evil. Then all the people — so the old men say — lived like saints: not drinking, nor smoking, nor neglecting their prayers, and forgave one another their sins, even when blood had been spilt. If any one then found money or anything, he tied it to a stake and set it up by the roadside. In those days God gave the people success in everything — not as now."

"In the mountains they don't smoke or drink now," said Gamzálo.

"Your Shamil is a lámorey," said Khan Mahomá, winking at Lóris-Mélikov. (Lámorey was a contemptuous term for a mountaineer.)

"Yes, lámorey means mountaineer," replied Gamzálo. "It is in the mountains that the eagles dwell."

"Smart fellow! Well hit!" said Khan Mahomá with a grin, pleased at his adversary's apt retort.

Seeing the silver cigarette-case in Lóris Mélikov's hand, Khan Mahomá asked for a cigarette; and when Lóris=Mélikov remarked that they were forbidden to smoke, he winked with one eye and jerking his head in the direction of Hadji Murád's bedroom replied that they could do it as long as they were not seen. He at once began smoking — not inhaling — and pouting his red lips awkwardly as he blew out the smoke.

"That is wrong!" said Gamzálo severely, and left the room for a time.

Khan Mahomá winked after him, and, while smoking, asked Lóris-Mélikov where he could best buy a silk beshmét and a white cap.

"Why; hast thou so much money?"

"I have enough," replied Khan Mahomá with a wink.

"Ask him where he got the money," said Eldár, turning his handsome smiling face towards Lóris-Mélikov.

"Oh, I won it!" said Khan Mahomá quickly; and related how, walking in Tiflis the day before, he had come upon a group of men — Russians and Armenians — playing at orlyánka (a kind of heads-and-tails). The stake was a large one: three gold pieces and much silver. Khan Mahomá at once saw what the game consisted in, and, jingling the coppers he had in his pocket, he went up to the players and said he would stake the whole amount.

"How couldst thou do it? Hadst thou so much?" asked Lóris-Mélikov.

"I had only twelve kopecks," said Khan Mahomá, grinning.

"Well, but if thou hadst lost?"

"Why, look here!" said Khan Mahomá pointing to his pistol.

"Wouldst thou have given that?"

"Why give it? I should have run away, and

if anyone had tried to stop me I should have killed him — that's all!"

"Well, and didst thou win?"

"Aye, I won it all and went away!"

Lóris-Mélikov quite understood what sort of men Khan Mahomá and Eldár were. Khan Mahomá was a merry fellow, careless and ready for any spree. He did not know what to do with his superfluous vitality. He was always gay and reckless, and played with his own and other people's lives. For the sake of that sport with life, he had now come over to the Russians, and for the same sport he might go back to Shamil to-morrow.

Eldár was also quite easy to understand. He was a man entirely devoted to his murshíd; calm, strong, and firm.

The red-haired Gamzálo was the only one Lóris-Mélikov did not understand. He saw that that man was not only loyal to Shamil, but felt an insuperable aversion contempt repugnance and hatred for all Russians; and Lóris-Mélikov could therefore not understand why he had come over to the Russians. It occurred to him that, as some of the higher officials suspected,

Hadji Murád's surrender, and his tales of hatred against Shamil, might be a fraud; and that perhaps he had surrendered only to spy out the Russians' weak spots, that — after escaping back to the mountains — he might be able to direct his forces accordingly. Gamzálo's whole person strengthened this suspicion.

"The others, and Hadji Murád himself, know how to hide their intentions; but this one betrays them by his open hatred," thought he.

Lóris-Mélikov tried to speak to him. He asked whether he did not feel dull. "No, I don't!" he growled hoarsely, without stopping his work, and he glanced at Lóris-Mélikov out of the corner of his one eye. He replied to all Lóris-Mélikov's other questions in a similar manner.

While Lóris-Mélikov was in the room, Hadji Murád's fourth murid, the Avar Khanéfi, came in; a man with a hairy face and neck, and a vaulted chest as rough as though overgrown with moss. He was strong, and a hard worker; always engrossed in his duties, and, like Eldár, unquestioningly obedient to his master.

When he entered the room to fetch some rice,

Lóris-Mélikov stopped him and asked where he came from, and how long he had been with Hadji Murád.

"Five years," replied Khanéfi. "I come from the same aoul as he. My father killed his uncle, and they wished to kill me," he said calmly, looking from beneath his joined eyebrows straight into Lóris-Mélikov's face. "Then I asked them to adopt me as a brother."

"What do you mean by 'adopt as a brother?'"

"I did not shave my head nor cut my nails for two months, and then I came to them. They let me in to Patimát, his mother, and she gave me the breast and I became his brother."

Hadji Murád's voice could be heard from the next room, and Eldár, immediately answering his call, promptly wiped his hands and went with large strides into the drawing-room.

"He asks thee to come," said he, coming back.

Lóris-Mélikov gave another cigarette to the merry Khan Mahomá, and went into the drawing-room.