A discussion of this sort had but just ended. The older people returned
to the house, and through the open windows one could from time to time
hear snatches of Stavruchènko’s funny stories, together with the merry
laughter of his audience.
The young people remained in the garden. The student spreading his
_svìtka_ on the ground, with his sheepskin hat pushed on one side, had
stretched himself out on the grass with affected carelessness. His older
brother sat beside Evelyn on a bench near the wall. The cadet, in his
carefully buttoned uniform, was seated next to them; while at a short
distance, with drooping head, sat the blind youth leaning back against
the window-sill. He was turning over in his mind the discussions he had
just heard, which had stirred him deeply, even to agitation.
“What did you think of all that was said just now, Pani Evelyn?” said the
student turning to her; “you have not spoken a single word.”
“What you told your father is all very fine; but—”
“Well—but what?”
The young girl did not reply at once. She let her work fall upon her lap,
smoothed it out, and slightly bending forward began to examine it as if
it absorbed her entire attention. It would have been difficult to say
whether she was considering the advisability of using coarser canvas for
her embroidery, or whether she was meditating over her reply.
Meanwhile the young men waited impatiently. The student, his face
kindling with interest, rose on his elbow and turned toward the young
girl. Her neighbor sat gazing at her with his calm and questioning eyes.
The blind young man abandoned his easy attitude, sat up erect, and turned
his face away from the others.
“But,” she said softly, still smoothing out her embroidery, “every man
must choose his own career, gentlemen.”
“Lord bless us; what wisdom!” rudely exclaimed the student. “Really, how
old are you, Pani?”
“Seventeen,” replied Evelyn, simply,—straightway adding, with an air of
mingled triumph and curiosity, “I suppose you thought that I was a great
deal older, didn’t you?”
The young men laughed.
“Had I been asked for an opinion concerning your age,” said her neighbor,
“I should have been quite at a loss to decide between thirteen and
twenty-three. At times you seem a mere child, and the next moment I hear
you reasoning with the wisdom of an aged dame.”
“You must treat serious matters seriously, Gavrìlo Petròvitch,” said the
young girl in tones of admonition, and once more returned to her work.
For a moment all were still. Evelyn resumed her needle-work with her
former deliberation, while the young men looked with curiosity at the
miniature form of this wise young person. Although she had grown and
developed considerably since the time of her first meeting with Peter,
the student’s comments upon her age were quite just. At the first glance
this tiny, slender maiden seemed but a girl, although her tranquil,
self-possessed movements revealed the dignity of a woman. Her face
produced the same impression. That type of face seems peculiar to the
Slav women. Handsome, regular features, outlined in calm severity; blue
eyes, with a direct and tranquil gaze; pale cheeks, rarely tinged with
color,—not however the pallor that is ever ready to flush with the
burning flame of passion, but rather akin to the cold purity of the snow.
Evelyn’s fair hair, glossy and abundant, showing darker reflections about
her marble-like temples, was drawn back and gathered into one massive
braid, which seemed to weigh her head back as she walked.
The blind youth, too, had grown taller and more mature. Any one seeing
him at that moment, as he sat apart from the group just described,
pale, agitated, and handsome, would have been instantly attracted by
that peculiar face, upon whose surface every emotion of the soul was so
plainly reflected. His black hair waved over a high forehead faintly
lined by premature wrinkles; his cheeks alternately flushed and grew
pale; the lower lip, slightly drooping at the corners, twitched nervously
from time to time, and the large handsome eyes with their unwavering gaze
added to this eminently South Russian type of face a somewhat unusual and
sombre character.
“So Pani Evelyn supposes,” said the student in a sarcastic tone, after
a short pause, “that the matters we have been discussing here are
inaccessible to the feminine mind; that her sphere is to be limited by
the nursery and the kitchen.”
The young girl replied with her usual seriousness: “No, you are mistaken.
I understood all that was said,—therefore it is accessible to a woman’s
mind. I spoke only for myself, individually.”
She became silent again, and bending over her work seemed so absorbed in
it that the young man had not the courage to pursue his questions.
“Strange,” he muttered; “one might suppose that you had deliberately
planned the entire course of your life.”
“Why should that seem strange, Gavrìlo Petròvitch?” replied the young
girl gently. “Probably even Illyà Ivànovitch [that was the cadet’s name]
has plans for the future, and he is younger than I.”
“You are right,” remarked the cadet, flattered by this supposition. “Not
long ago I read the biography of N——. He too had definite plans for his
life. He married at twenty, and was a commander at twenty-five.”
The student laughed sarcastically, and the young girl blushed.
“You see,” she said a moment later, in the same quiet tone, “every one
plans his own career.”
No one replied, and a thoughtful silence fell upon the young people,—a
silence beneath which a certain awkwardness was evident. They were all
aware that the conversation had become personal; and the rustle of the
darkening and seemingly displeased old garden was all the sound they
heard.