Once, as he was crossing the yard, Maxim heard from the drawing-room,
where the music-lessons usually took place, some very queer exercises.
They consisted of two notes. First, the highest key of the upper register
was struck incessantly, in swift repetition; then the low reverberation
of a bass note jarred upon the ear. Curious to discover what might be
the meaning of these strange musical exercises, Maxim hobbled across the
yard, and a minute later entered the drawing-room. He paused, and stood
motionless in the doorway, contemplating the scene before him.
The boy, who was now ten years old, sat on a low stool at his mother’s
feet. Beside him, craning his neck and turning his long beak from side to
side, stood a tame stork which Joachim had presented to the “Panitch.”
The boy fed him every morning from his own hands, and the bird followed
his new friend and master from morning till night. At this moment
Petrùsya was holding him by one hand, and slowly stroking his neck and
back with the other, while an expression of deep thought and absorption
rested on his face. The mother meanwhile, evidently excited and at the
same time with a look of sadness, was striking with her finger the key
that sent forth that sharp resonant note. At the same time, slightly
bending forward from her seat, she watched the boy’s face with a painful
scrutiny. When his hand, gliding along the brilliant white plumage,
reached the tips of the wings, where the white plumes were suddenly
replaced by black ones, Anna Michàilovna instantly moved her hand to the
other key, and the low bass note, with its deep reverberations, echoed
through the room.
Both mother and son were so much engrossed in their occupation that
they had not observed Maxim’s entrance, until, recovering from his
astonishment, he interrupted this performance: “Annùsya, what does this
mean?”
Meeting Maxim’s searching glance, the young woman was as much confused
as if a severe tutor had detected her in the commission of some fault.
“You see,” she said in confusion, “he tells me that he can distinguish
a certain difference between the colors of the stork, but he cannot
understand wherein this difference consists. Truly he was the first one
to mention it, and I believe he is right.”
“Well, what of it?”
“Well, I was trying, after a fashion, to explain this difference to
him by sounds. Don’t be vexed, Max, but I really think that there is a
correspondence.”
This unexpected idea took Maxim so entirely by surprise that at first he
was at a loss for an answer. He asked her to repeat her experiments, and
as he watched the rigid concentration of the boy’s expression he shook
his head. “Believe me, Anna,” he said when he was alone with her, “it is
better not to arouse thoughts in the boy’s mind, to which you can give no
satisfactory solution. He must resign himself to his blindness,—there is
no help for it; and it is our duty to keep him from trying to comprehend
the light. For my part, I make every effort to avert each question, and
if it were but possible to keep him removed from all objects likely to
suggest them, he would no more realize that a sense is missing than we
who possess five deplore the want of a sixth.”
The sister yielded as usual to her brother’s persuasive arguments; but
this time both were mistaken. While overrating the influence of outside
impressions, Maxim forgot the powerful stimulus which Nature communicates
to a child’s soul.