“I know that she was beautiful because my father has her portrait. She was a Christian Princess of Georgia, daughter of the Eristav of Kakhetia. He was a noble Prince of the Bagratides, descended from the Great Sarbad. The price paid by that family in expiation of murder is double the blood-fine of the lower class!”
She showed her little gleaming teeth in so proud a smile as she made this statement that Morty stammered out:
“Uncommon gratifying, and—and jolly for them, I’m sure, Miss!”
She did not look at Mortimer Jowell. Her great gazelle eyes were fixed upon a heron that was fishing in a little river that wound through the deep green vineyards beside the dusty road. The bird rose with a loud, melancholy honk, clapped its wings, and flew away diagonally, its long legs stuck out straight behind it, its crop thrust forwards, its slender neck curved back between its wings. A shaggy dog rushed out of a little hut that was only a reed-mat thrown over two poles, barking at the heron—a gypsy-girl thrust her tangled head out and nodded to Golden Cloak, showing grinning white teeth in a face burned black by the Bulgarian sun. The nightingales were jug-jugging in the poplars that edged the rivulet, the walnut and apricot-trees seemed full of lesser warblers, the frogs kept up a subdued bass of croakings, the black-backed, white-bellied swifts wheeled screaming through the pure, clear burning air. And it was to the boy as if he had never before seen these things, or guessed their beauty and significance. And they, and the hot blue sky that roofed them, and the thick black dust his boots and the delicate feet of her horse were bedded in, were of Golden Cloak and belonged to her, as the setting belongs to the gem. And, clear and plaintive as some shepherd’s flute, her small, sweet voice went on speaking of the dead mother:
“She died when I was born. Her family were angry when she ran away to be always with my father. They held him accursed because he had abjured Christianity and embraced the faith of Islâm. But it was her fate. Can a woman resist her fate? And besides, my father is not a good Mussulman at all!”
The great blue-black eyes were on Mortimer’s. They drew and drew him....
“Not long afterwards my father was sent upon an expedition into Mingrelia. It was the month of Nissân—the time when the people make strong wine of green honey and jundari—what you call, I think, the millet? The Bashi stole much of this, and became more than ever ‘lost heads.’ They entered the villages of Christians, they plundered, burned, and killed men, women, and children without mercy. And my mother rode up with my father, as one of his chawushes cut off the hands of a young girl.... To my father she said that night: ‘The child of our love will be born handless.’ And it was so. And when they brought me to her, she lifted the shawl that covered me, and died!”
The proud little face broke up. Great tears sprang from the beautiful eyes and ran down, splashing on the golden braidings of the Hussar tunic, falling like scattered pearls on her black sheepskin of the saddle-holsters. She shook her head, and jerked them off. Then, trembling at his own audacity, Mortimer Jowell produced from his cuff a spotless cambric handkerchief, and would have dried those sacred tears, had not the fiery Kabarda reared so suddenly, that the too-daring Ensign, catching the bridle in fear for Golden Cloak, was swung off his feet.
“Let him go,” she said, high in mid-air, unconcerned and now smiling. Adding, as Morty obeyed, and the horse came gently to the ground: “Do not be angry, Urvan, this is another friend!” Then: “Urvan is a little jealous, he sees me speak to so few people.... And next to my father and my nurse, Maryanka, a Tartar woman who has been with me since my birth, he is my protector.... My father trusts me with him.... He would be dangerous to anyone who tried to do me harm.... You cannot think how he loves me!... Even like this he loves me!”
And with a gesture that wrung the boy’s soft heart she showed her piteous stumps. And Morty blurted out, desperately: