I had one other visit from Vainka, a few months later.
I had been hunting near his village, when of a sudden I became aware of Master V. approaching me through a thin birch spinney which lay between me and the fields around the hamlet. He looked very dejected—not at all as one would expect a bear to look who had just regained his liberty! He brightened up a little when he saw me.
"Is anything the matter, brother?" I inquired, as I went to meet him.
"Nothing whatever," he said, "excepting that, curiously enough, I do not feel inclined to escape, and yet here I am, in the act of escaping!"
"But how can that be?" I said; "in the first place you must be glad to escape—no bear of any self-respect could help feeling glad; and besides, how could you possibly escape against your will?"
"Well," he said, "perhaps I have no self-respect; anyhow I only came because they left the door of the stable wide open and my chain was off at the time. All I had to do was to walk out, and now I wish I hadn't! This is just the time when little Masha brings me my lunch of delicious bread" (that's the cooked rye I mentioned), "and—and—upon my word I think I shall go back—what's the use of being free—I am no longer fitted for a wild life."
And sure enough the poor-spirited creature, whose once keen, free spirit had been entirely deadened by contact with the humans and their debasing life, would have made off then and there!
But I stopped him. "You shall do nothing of the kind, my friend!" I said firmly. "You shall come into the woods with me and have a good time, and when you've enjoyed a run and some fresh air and natural food, you shall do as you like! Come on!" So I got him away, and for three days we had the grandest fun in the world. He cheered up and agreed to join me in a little hunting close to a neighbouring village—he would do nothing near his own. We killed two dogs, a young cow, and some sheep, old Vainka thoroughly entering into the spirit of the fun, and even enjoying the wild fury of the humans, who could not find us—there being no snow.
But after three days of freedom and real life Vainka grew home-sick. He yawned frequently, and said how sad little Masha would be without him, and wondered what she was doing now—and now, and whether his master—whom, in spite of his solemn vows to our mother, he had evidently learned to love—was quite well—and so on. He became so melancholy and maudlin, that I perceived it was no use fighting against destiny, and I recommended him to be off to his dancing and skipping and his Masha and his confounded man-worship—and away he went—poor fellow! as clear a case of a good bear gone wrong as it has ever been my lot to come across.
III