“So this is to be a woman, is it?”
“Yes; and a few other things. To scrape lint and nurse the wounded was proper woman’s employment down in Poland yonder. As for the other things you value so much,—the power of thinking, and reasoning, and all that,—where is the Polish woman that would not now be better without it?”
“In the same way, I suppose, as their husbands and brothers would be better without either thoughts or feelings. Polish men would be happier now as savages than as enslaved heroes, and, in like manner, women would be better as mere animals than as rational beings; therefore, patriotism is to be eschewed by the one sex, and rationality by the other. This is your reasoning, is it not?”[not?”]
“Let us have no reasoning, pray. All I mean is, that I am sorry to see your mother look so wasted, and your sister so haggard; and that I wish they could be as happy as my little woman. There! she has started a sable.”
And Paul, who had talked more gravity this day than any day since the loss of the last battle in which he fought, bounded off to his sport. He was not recoverable, for five minutes together, till near nightfall, going hither and thither, faster than Taddeus could follow him, and having not a word to spare while taking aim, or beating about for a new prey. He was very careful of his friend, however, making signs to Emilia that she was to attend upon and aid him to the utmost. At first, Taddeus would rather have been left to himself, and found it difficult to receive the lady’s kind offices thankfully; but they really were offices of kindness, and so modestly and gently urged, that his repugnance gave way, and he soon submitted to have his infirmity relieved by one who was certainly a far better help in guiding, walking, and preparing for sport, than either his mother or sister could have been.
To his own surprise, he was not the first to think of returning home, though he had presently obtained all the game he wanted. While he was still moving onwards, and Paul was roving, nobody knew where, Emilia began to look about her, and up into the sky, with a countenance of some anxiety, and a gesture implying that she either felt very cold, or expected soon to feel so. It had not been one of the most trying days Taddeus had known. The sun, very low in the sky, had shone with a dim, hazy light, in which, however, there was some warmth. There had been little wind, and that little had not told of frost. The heavens were grey, and there was a very dark line to windward; but this was so usual, as was the moaning among the firs which now began to make itself heard, that Taddeus would have taken no particular notice of it if Emilia had not appeared to do so. Communication by language not having yet been established between him and his supporter, he could not make out the extent of her fears, till she at length slipped from under the arm which leaned on her shoulder, climbed a neighbouring pine like the nimblest of the squirrels that harboured near, and uttered a peculiar call, which could be heard to a vast distance, from its unlikeness to any of the deep and grave sounds of a northern wilderness. She came down, and pointed the way back; refusing, by signs, to wait for Paul, and seeming confident that he would immediately follow. He did not appear, however, and again she climbed, and again she called, more loudly and hastily, as volumes of black clouds unrolled themselves before the wind, and seemed to sink as well as spread. Taddeus saw that she apprehended snow, but was not fully aware how very soon the atmosphere, in its now approaching state, becomes incapable of transmitting sound to any distance; and that if Paul was to be warned homewards by the cry, it must be immediately. It was not long before he came, considerably out of humour at finding that both his companions were safe and well. He had concluded that some accident had caused such repeated alarms, and was vexed to have been called off from a very tempting chase.
“Call, call, call!” he exclaimed; “they came as thick as an English traveller’s calls at an hotel; and all for nothing. I wonder the jade dared to take such a liberty with me. She made my heart turn over; I can tell you that. I thought of nothing less than that a bear had bugged one of you. Before I was frightened, I would not hear her, for you never saw such a beautiful animal as I was at the heels of. A black fox, if you will believe me; but you won’t; nor any body else, for black foxes are oftener seen than caught; and so one is winked at for a tale-telling traveller, if one says what I am saying now. But it was a black fox, as sure as that is a white hare over your shoulder; and I should have had him in another minute, if that jade had not sent a call that went through me when my shot should have gone through him. His coat would have been a fortune to me. My hut would have been a palace presently, in comparison with Ernest’s, to say nothing of the glory of being the first of you to shoot a black fox. And to have been called off just because there is snow in the air! As if snow was as rare here as it is at Timbuctoo!”
And thus the disappointed sportsman went on growling,—not so that his wife could understand him. She only comprehended that, for some unknown cause, her potent lord was displeased with her. This was enough to make her look very penitent. She scarcely glanced at the threatening sky, when Taddeus pointed it out as her excuse, and stood, looking the quintessence of a slave, till motioned to to lead the way.
She led them nearly as straight as the arrow flies;—a mode of proceeding more practicable in that country than in many less wild. The forests were not tangled, like those of a southern region, but composed of multitudes of stems, bare to the height of some feet from the ground. There were few small streams in the plains; and those few were rendered passable by stepping-stones, the precise situation of which Emilia seemed to know by instinct. Though it was now nearly dark, she did not, in one instance, fail to arrive in a straight line with the passage over the stream: nor did she once pause, as if perplexed, when her companions saw nothing out a wilderness of wood around them. There was no hope of star-light guidance this evening. The clouds hung so low that they seemed to rest on the tops of the stunted firs; and they slowly rolled and tumbled, as if they were about to enwreath and carry up those who were moving beneath them. It was time now, Paul perceived, to cease his grumbling, as something more important was on hand than the chase of a black fox. On issuing from a wood, a blinding, suffocating mass of snow was driven in their faces, and compelled them all to turn their backs if they wished to breathe. Not the more for this would Emilia allow them one moment’s pause; and perceiving that the lame Taddeus, who had long had some difficulty in proceeding in the usual manner, was utterly unable to walk backwards, she snatched his handkerchief from his neck, hung it over his face like a veil, seized both his hands, and pulled him on thus blind-folded.
“Surely,” said Taddeus, “we had better climb a tree, and wait till the drift is past.”