The stream partook of the character of the scene, and soon after entering the grassy plains and verdant woods became a pretty rippling river, though the masses of stones on each side its bed showed that its violence could be again excited by the winter rains.
A few versts from the town, on a steep grass bank, shaded by a picturesque group of beech, was a very pretty wooden house (the only habitation we had seen all day), something like a large Swiss chalet. The mother and family of the late Prince Dimitri Sherwasidzi, who died a few months ago, live here. The ladies, dressed in deep mourning, were sitting in the broad verandah. They wore black woollen robes, and had veils of the same sombre material wrapped round their heads. The dress was most funereal. The tall, slender women, with their gloomy drapery, that hung around them in heavy but graceful folds, looked like figures from a Greek frieze. Mourning here is very rigid. For three months after the death of the head of a family, the ladies see no visitors excepting near relatives. Every week the Princess Sherwasidzi, attended by her women, visits the grave of her son. For several hours they weep and mourn, casting ashes upon their heads with lamentable cries and screams.
Standing a little apart from the family dwelling is another similar but smaller house, entirely devoted to the entertainment of guests. Hospitality is much esteemed and largely practised by the upper class of Circassians. No greater praise can be awarded than to say that a man “keeps forty tables.”
The ride back in the cool evening was very pleasant, but devoid of incident, with the exception of seeing our poor Domenico sent flying over his horse’s head. After having so well surmounted all the little difficulties of the day, his horse stumbled over a sand hillock, and this inglorious somersault was the result. Happily no harm was done beyond a torn coat, but the Cossacks were immensely delighted at his discomfiture. Even the grim old corporal gave his grey moustache a pull to hide the unwonted smile in which he indulged.
CHAPTER XIV.
CIRCASSIAN MEN AND WOMEN.
Our life here is full of quaint contrasts—a curious mixture of wildness and civilisation. The days are passed in wild rides amidst the hills and mountains, the dash of danger that attends them adding zest to the interest of seeing scenery, magnificent in the sublimity of its savage grandeur, and exquisitely lovely in the tender beauty of its sequestered valleys and fern-clad forests.
At eight o’clock the scene changes, and we find ourselves in the midst of a most kind and agreeable little society, where music and dancing and merry talk make the hours pass much too quickly. The little world of Soukoum is of course very limited, but it comprises so many charming and clever people that one cannot help regretting that some of them should, like the flowers in the desert, be destined to bloom so far away from the more frequented haunts of men.
General B——, the Governor, is unmarried, but the Admiral’s young wife, Madame G——, aided by her pretty sister, Mlle. Olga J——, contrives to make her rough Circassian house as attractive as if it were in Paris or St. Petersburg.