Consequently, however much Maxim might try to exclude all outward
impressions from his nephew, he had no control over the urgent cravings
that came from within. With all his precautions he could but avert a
premature awakening of these unsatisfied yearnings, and thereby diminish
the boy’s chances of suffering. In every other respect the child’s
unhappy fate, with all its cruel consequences, must take its course.
And like a dark shadow this fate advanced to meet him. From year to
year the boy’s natural vivacity subsided, like a receding wave, while
the melancholy that was echoing within his soul grew persistently, and
left its impress on his temperament. His laughter, which in childhood
resounded at every new and especially vivid impression, was now rarely
heard. He was naturally less accessible to all that was bright and
cheerful, and more or less humorous, than to that vague obscurity and
gloom peculiar to the Southern nature, which finds reflection in the
folk-songs. These made a deep impression on the boy’s imagination. The
tears stood in his eyes whenever he heard how “the grave whispers to the
wind in the field,” and he loved to wander through the fields himself,
listening to this murmur. He longed more and more for solitude; and when
in his hours of recreation he started off on his lonely walk, the family
would avoid that direction, lest they might disturb his solitude.
Seated upon some mound out on the steppe, or on the hillock above the
river, or on the familiar cliff, Petrùsya would listen to the rustling
leaves, the whispering grass, the vague soughing of the wind across
the steppe. All this harmonized perfectly with the deep seriousness
of his mood. There, so far as in him lay, he was in absolute sympathy
with Nature; he understood her; she disturbed him by no perplexing and
unanswerable questions. There the wind fanned his very soul, and the
grass seemed to whisper soft words of pity; and as the spirit of the
youth in harmony with the gentle influences that surrounded him melted at
the tender caress of Nature, he felt his bosom swell with an emotion that
communicated itself to his whole being. In moments like these he would
throw himself on the cool, moist grass and weep; but in these tears there
was no bitterness. Again, he would seize his pipe, and enraptured by his
own emotions would improvise pensive melodies suited to his mood and to
the peaceful harmony of the steppe. One could easily understand that any
human sound coming unexpectedly to interrupt this mood would affect him
like a distressing discord. At such times the only fellowship possible to
him was with a soul akin to his own; and in the fair-haired girl from the
estate of the Possessor the boy enjoyed just such a companion.
This friendship was the more firmly knitted by mutual sympathy. If
Evelyn contributed to their partnership her calmness, her gentle
animation, or imparted to the blind boy some new detail of the
surrounding life, he in turn gave her his sorrow. The little woman’s
knowledge of him seemed to have dealt a serious blow to her tender
heart: pluck a dagger from a wound, and the bleeding will increase. On
the day when she first learned to know the blind boy on the hillock in
the steppe, her sympathy for his affliction had really caused her acute
pain, and his presence had grown by degrees quite indispensable to her.
Separation seemed to renew and increase the poignant pain of her wound,
and she longed to be with her little friend that she might appease her
own suffering by ministering constantly to his comfort.