Stepan showed a warm desire to embrace me, which proved that to him I was guiltless as yet, while Allai put both hands on his head, and bowed almost to my gaiters. Now if I could only make these fellows understand, and then get them to do the like to me, I should learn all about this sudden flitting, for the smallest of the Lesghians had always seemed to be in partnership with the greatest.
But alas! what a conflict of languages we had! I think it is St. James who dwells with great eloquence upon the many miseries we suffer from the tongue; he has not, however, described for us one of its most diabolical conditions, when it cannot hit upon the word it wants, and flies into a fury of perplexity with itself, and indignation at the stupid ear that keeps it so in limbo. Stepan tried English, and that was very bad; then I tried Lesghian, but that was much worse. He could see that I wanted to know why his master had broken up their English home so suddenly, and without so much as a word of farewell; but all that he could do towards telling me was to shake his head, and make a great noise in his throat, and box the boy's ears for laughing at him. Then something not altogether devoid of true insight occurred to him, for he shouted in a mighty voice, "Stepan dam fool!" and gave Allai some order, which sent him to the buildings like an arrow.
Something had occurred to me also, so often are ideas simultaneous, and while the messenger was gone, I took that leaf of which I have spoken, from my pocket-book, and handed it to Stepan. He looked at it with great surprise, and then put it to his lips and on his forehead, and then tore off a fibre and tasted it. "Adul! Adul!" or some word that sounded like that, he repeated frequently, and did his utmost to show me that he felt great curiosity about it. Upon this I pulled out a pencil and drew a rough sketch of myself being shot at, taking poetic licence to show the bullet in the air and the leaf dropping from it. Also I tried to represent a man crouching in a bush and popping at me, and although not a glimpse had been vouchsafed me of the villain on that occasion, I allowed imagination to indue him with the plumed hat of Prince Hafer. This I had no right to do; but surely a little liberty is pardonable with a gentleman who has taken a shot at one in the dark. At any rate Stepan fell in most briskly with the inference of this costumiery, and seemed rather pleased at the confirmation of his own moral estimate and foresight.
Until I began to think, I was surprised that he should be so calm about that black attempt to annihilate me; but remembering what he had been through, I let him take it according to his nature. He liked me, he approved of me, he thought me a good Englishman; and yet it would have been no more than the finish of a bear-hunt to him to have carried me home on the hurdle I jumped, when I went to the rescue of Allai. And I looked at him, with some disappointment.
"Enemy!" he said; it was the word that had long been hanging in his windcrop; and now he was so delighted with it that he said it three times over. "Good Englisk; dam enemy. Stepan see all—all right, dam enemy!"
His wondrous baldric (better smocked with cartridge-loops than a parish-clerk could show of plaiting on his Sunday front, in the days when his wife was proud of him) bulged on his mighty chest with the elation of this grand discovery. And then he said, "Bad man, bad man!" in a manner which appeared to me too abstract and philosophical. "No doubt you consider it very fine fun," I replied with some warmth of feeling, but the knowledge that he was no wiser.
Then up ran Allai, at a speed which made him resemble a hunted grasshopper, and I took from his claws a sealed letter, and looked at them both, in disdain of any hurry. "This will keep," I said very quietly; for though they knew not the meaning of my words, they might be asked afterwards how I received it, and they should have no flurry to report. So I put it in my pocket, like a Briton.
Stepan, and Allai, and one other man not equally well known to me, had evidently been left to finish the packing of some of the heavier goods, and the bales of books which had been printed, and to take them, as well as the beloved dogs, perhaps by some slower route, and rejoin their master by arrangement. I knew that Sûr Imar had long been preparing to move, when his period of banishment expired, but I was sure that he had no intention of departing so suddenly, when I had seen him last. Stepan contrived to let me know that the luggage was going by a smoker in a day or two from London pond, as he called it; and having no further business there, I took leave of him and Allai. The Lesghian giant was dignified and impressive in his long farewell, and gave me his blessing—as I supposed—and his invitation to the Caucasus. Also this comfort—"Enemy gone. No more shoot good Englisk," which was some relief to a heavy mind. But little Allai, and the two dogs—I could scarcely get away from them, so loving and so sad were they. The short November day was darkening, as I left the valley, where I had found so much wild happiness, and so much deep sorrow to humble me.