It was the old village Starchina, or Starost, or whatever his dignity may have been, in a state of mind so furious that it was true bliss to be no linguist. Strogue made out some of his compound curses, but was too wise to interpret them, or even to accept his own version; until that most venerable and profane of men saw little advantage in cursing himself. He flung down the shutter that served as a window, and poured about a sackful of snow down our necks.
This might be the manner of the country; but we resented it all the more for that, and spoke harshly of the place, and of all born near it, until Strogue sat up on his very hard board, and stared, with his eyes as close as burning glasses, at the old silver watch, "which a man could work a ship by," and exclaimed—"By Jove, he is done for now, George! We ought to have been at Karthlos by this time. However he is safe to go to Heaven, according to your account of him."
Even cowardice is sometimes less contemptible than flippancy. But I made no answer. My rage with myself was too deep to fly off into sparks against others. What could it matter to Strogue, or Starost, or even to Stepan himself, compared with me, with me, the snorer? If the noble man who had treated me as his equal—clumsy clodhopper as I was—and his daughter (the model of all love and grace) were butchered by savages to-morrow, upon whose head would their blood lie?
Upon mine—for my accursed laziness, self-indulgence, wicked gladness to believe the thing that I desired.
Then I went out, and looked for the sky which had been so blue, and the earth which had been so green, wherever it was not brown rockiness. Behold—there was nothing to behold—as Usi the Svân might have said of it—but grey thickness, fleecy softness, multitudinous whirl above, and vast whiteness, promiscuous glare, and slur of dazzle around us and below. Not what the puzzled world is wont to call a blizzard, and fly shuddering—for that only comes with a bitter blast, and is a mass of pointed particles—but a genuine downright heavy snowfall (such as we get in March sometimes, when we are sowing the pea-drill), big flakes, thick flakes, like a shower of daisies, flinging their tufts in feathery piles, and smothering one another. "It can't go on very long like this," says a man who has lost in half-a-minute the pattern of his coat and trousers.
Certainly it could not in Surrey or in Kent; but here in the Caucasus it proved that it could go on, long enough at any rate to bury all the trackways, and turn jagged rocks into treacherous white rollers. If we began (in our credulous greed for rest) with failing to know the time of day, we went on with losing the way; and what was worse, if possible, we lost the better part of our strength, through sprains, and strains, and stumbles in the drift. Mishaps of the like sort had befallen the party recruited by Stepan, although they had not overslept themselves as we did; and instead of prompt muster to start together at noon from the foot of Karthlos, we found that it was almost four o'clock before every one was ready.
"To do any good, we must travel all night," said Stepan, as he swung his heavy pack upon his rifle. "To travel all night on a turnpike road is all very well," Strogue answered; "but who could do it here, my friend? And sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If the snow stops us, it will stop the other fellows."
I had indulged in this hope too; but the Lesghian's words were against it. "No man can say, till his eyes give proof. But the storm came from the east, and they seldom travel far in the summer-time. Like enough there was not a flake on the western side of the Russian road. Ha! Kobaduk, art thou coming too? Thy old limbs will tire, we shall have to leave thee, even though thou hast that colt."
We had not climbed the steep to the tower, because time was so short, and the old steward could not be of any service to us. Therefore it was a great surprise when he slipped among us from a snowy corner, leading a rough unsaddled colt, with a strap buckled over his loins to which a sword was attached on one side, and a rusty old musket on the other. An English crowd would have gibed, I fear, at the menacing aspect of this feeble ancient, and even Strogue made no attempt to hide a grin; but the Lesghians glanced at him kindly, and made room for him among them, and he plodded on resolutely without a word, like a fatalist come to look fate in the face.
Even in a small lot such as we were, and consisting chiefly of hardy fellows, there must be—according to the varicose vein which runs through all humanity—three or four at least of softer pith, or eruptions that arise to the occasion, or some thing or other that goes amiss. And not having one leg too many among us, or I might say less than half the legs we wanted, our hard fortune was that the briskest shank among us—which was not my own, though I did my best, and in Surrey would have challenged any of them—was obliged to stick fast, when it got too far ahead, and disguise its own gratitude for a thrill of rest, by turning on its heel disdainfully. In a word, nearly all our most excellent men, brave and zealous, and brought up from childhood to a good stroke of speed after other people's cattle, had lost the best part of their training, by compulsion—under Russian tyranny—to attend to their own flocks and herds, instead of lifting their neighbour's.