Short Fiction, Vladimir Korolenko [finding audrey TXT] 📗

were not familiar with the Nechipòrs and Hvèydkas in certain villages, they had studied the class as a whole; and from that point of view they deduced their generalizations. For the aged and experienced, whose habits of thought are fettered by routine, the forest is hidden by the trees that stand nearest, but young men can embrace the most remote perspective at a glance.”

The old man was not displeased to hear the learned discourses of his sons. “They did not go to school for nothing,” he often remarked, “but I can tell you that my Hvèydka will lead you like calves by a rope. That’s the way it is! But he cannot deceive me, for I can stuff him into my tobacco-pouch and put him in my pocket. You are nothing but youngsters and fools!”

III

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 windowsill. 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 needlework 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. Anyone 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