Short Fiction, Vladimir Korolenko [finding audrey TXT] 📗

of the far-off world, known to the blind boy only through the medium of song and story, had no entrance here. Amid the dreary whispers of the garden and the peaceful everyday life of the country house, he heard of the tumults and tribulations of the world from the lips of others; and his imagination pictured it all veiled in clouds of mystery⁠—like a song, an heroic poem, or a fairy tale.

Everything seemed favorable. The mother felt that the soul of her son, protected as by a wall was living in an enchanted dream, which was tranquil even if it were unreal. Evelyn, who had imperceptibly grown to womanhood, watched this enchanted tranquillity with her calm gaze, sometimes showing a slight surprise, or an expression of wonder as to future events, but never a shadow of impatience. Popèlski the father had brought his estate into a prosperous condition, but the good man troubled himself very little about his son’s future life. A man of Maxim’s temperament could only be ill at ease in this quiet life; he simply endured it, looking upon it as a temporary arrangement, which had interwoven itself into his plans in spite of himself. He deemed it necessary for the youth’s interior nature to gain strength and maturity, that he might be better able to cope with the rude assaults of life.

Meanwhile, outside the limit of this enchanted circle, life went on, seething, bubbling, and raging; and at last the time came when the old veteran decided to break into this circle⁠—to open the door of the hothouse, and admit a current of outside air.

II

By way of breaking the ice, he invited an old friend, who lived about seventy versts from the Popèlski estate, to pay him a visit. In former times Maxim used to be the visitor; but he knew that some young people were staying at Stavruchènko’s house at that time, and so he wrote him a letter inviting the whole party. This invitation was accepted with pleasure. The two old men were bound by ties of friendship, and the young people were all familiar with the once famous name of Maxim Yatzènko, connected as it was with many a romantic tale. One of the sons of Stavruchènko was a student in the University of Kiev, in the School of Philology, very popular at that time. Another son was studying music in the St. Petersburg conservatory. Another member of the party was a young cadet, the son of a neighboring landlord. Stavruchènko was a vigorous old man, gray-haired, wearing a long mustache after the Cossack fashion, and the loose Cossack trousers tucked into the boots. His tobacco-pouch and pipe were suspended from his belt, and he spoke nothing but Little Russian; and beside his two sons, dressed in white sleeveless coats and embroidered Little Russian shirts, he vividly recalled Gògol’s Taras Bulbà with his followers. But Stavruchènko lacked the romantic characteristics of Gògol’s hero. He was on the contrary an excellent and practical landlord, who had always got on well with the serfs; and now that serfdom was abolished he was clever enough to adapt himself to the new conditions. He knew the people after the landlord fashion; that is, he knew every peasant in his village, and every peasant’s cow, and almost every extra coin in each peasant’s purse.

But if Stavruchènko did not have hand-to-hand encounters with his sons, like Bulbà, they were forever at odds, regardless of time or place. Everywhere, whether at home or abroad, endless disputes arose between the old man and the young people; it usually began on the part of the old man, who was always jeering at the “ideal Panitchis.” The Panitchis would grow excited, the old man likewise; whereupon an indescribable uproar would ensue, during which both sides would give and take some pretty severe thrusts. It was a reproduction of the differences between “Fathers” and “Sons;” only in the southwest, where a certain courtesy of manner prevails, such scenes in the family circle are more gracefully managed.

The young people who had been away at school from early childhood, had only seen the country during their vacation, and therefore had not the practical knowledge possessed by the father-landlords. When that tidal wave known as the “love of the people” came rushing in upon society, it found the young men in the higher classes of the Gymnasium. They turned their attention to the study of the lower classes, seeking their information at first in books. They soon proceeded, however, to the immediate study of the manifestations of the “national spirit” in its causes. In the southwestern districts the young Panitchis, in their white svìtkas50 and embroidered shirts, devoted themselves to the fashionable amusement of “visiting the people.” They paid but slight attention to their economical condition, but made notes of the words and music of the dùmkas51 and songs, studied the traditions, compared historical events with the traces they had left upon the popular mind, and looked upon the peasant in general through the poetical prism of an intellectually popular idealism. Thus the constant clashing of opinions diametrically opposed to one another entered into the disputes between the old man and the young people, and they were always at variance. And yet the old man himself listened with delight to the eloquent tirades of the young fellows.

“Just hear him,” Stavruchènko would say to Maxim, with a sly nudge of his elbow, while the student with flushed face and sparkling eyes was delivering his oration. “Hear him, he talks like a book! One might really imagine him a clever man. You had better tell us, you wise-head, how my Nechipòr deceived you.” The old man’s mustaches twitched, and he laughed heartily as he related with a purely Hohòl humor the tale of their discomfiture.

The young men blushed, but they paid him back in his own coin, saying: “If they