Short Fiction, Vladimir Korolenko [finding audrey TXT] 📗

moan were the embodied image of some ghost that suddenly rose before him.

“That?” repeated Maxim, indifferently. “They are only blind beggars⁠—blind like yourself, and somewhat cold besides. They would like to go home, but they are hungry. You have some money in your pocket, have you not? Throw them a five-copeck piece.”

Peter, who in his anguish had rushed ahead, suddenly stopped. He took out his purse, and instinctively turning away that he might not hear the mournful strains repeated, held it out to Maxim, saying⁠—

“Give them this! Give them all you have with you⁠—only let us go away! For mercy’s sake, let us go home as quickly as possible! I cannot, I cannot bear to hear it!”

VI

On the following day Peter was lying in his room prostrated with a nervous fever. He lay tossing on his bed, with a look of agony on his face, as if he heard some sound from which he was struggling to escape. The old local doctor attributed this illness to a cold, but Maxim well knew its real cause. It was a severe attack, and at the time of the crisis the sick man lay motionless for several days; but youth came off victorious in the end.

One pleasant autumn morning a bright sunbeam crept in at the window and rested near the invalid’s head. Anna Michàilovna turning to Evelyn said, “Please draw the shade. I dread that light.”

Rising in obedience to her request, the girl was arrested by the unexpected sound of the blind man’s voice:⁠—

“Never mind, please. Let it be as it is.”

Both women leaned over him with rapture:

“Do you know me?” asked the mother.

“Yes,” replied the invalid; then paused, as though trying to recall some memory of the past. “Ah, yes!” he said softly. “How dreadful it was!”

Evelyn laid her hand on his lips. “Don’t, don’t! You must not talk; it is bad for you.”

Pressing the hand to his lips Peter covered it with kisses. Tears stood in his eyes. He wept long and freely, and seemed to gain relief. “I shall never forget your lesson,” he said, turning his face toward Maxim, who entered at that moment. “I thank you. You have helped me to realize my own happiness, by making me acquainted with the woes of others. God grant that I may never forget the lesson!”

The disease once conquered, the youthful constitution made short work of recovery. In two weeks Peter was again on his feet. A great change had taken place in him. The serious shock to his nerves was succeeded by a pensive but calm and gentle sadness; his very features were changed, having lost all trace of the old mental suffering.

Maxim feared lest this might prove but a phase, occasioned by the depression of the nervous system. But months went by, and still the blind man’s mood showed no sign of change.

The realization of one’s own misfortunes sometimes paralyzes the energy, and plunges the soul into a state of passive endurance; while the knowledge of the sorrows of others will, on the contrary, often rouse one to energetic action, and uplifting the whole nature stimulate mental activity, and lead one to seek opportunities for showing sympathy.

A longing to relieve human misery had now risen in Peter’s heart, supplanting his former vain endeavor to escape from personal grief. He had as yet no clear idea as to the ways and means, and had but slender confidence in his own power; yet he was inspired by hope.

VII Intuition I

When Evelyn announced to the old Yaskùlskis her firm intention of marrying the blind man, the old mother wept; but the father, after saying a prayer to the images, declared that it was manifestly the will of God. In due course of time, therefore, the wedding was celebrated.

Now began a new and happy life for Peter; and yet it made no great change in him. In his happiest moments there was a shade of sadness in his smile, as if he felt the insecurity of his happiness. When he was told that he was about to become a father, he received the news with alarm. Still his present life, absorbed as it was in anxiety for his wife and future child, left him no time for brooding over the inevitable. Now and then, in the midst of these cares the memory of that pitiful wail of the blind men would rise in his mind and wring his heart with pity and compassion, thereby diverting his thoughts into a different channel.

The blind man had also lost to a certain extent his extreme sensitiveness to the outward impressions made by light, and his mental activity was proportionately diminished. The turbulent organic force within him lay for the moment dormant, with no conscious effort of will on his part to rouse it into action, or to combine his manifold sensations into one consistent whole. But who can tell?⁠—this interior calmness may have served to promote the work that was unconsciously to himself going on within him; it may have facilitated the union of those vague sensations of light with his logical thoughts on the subject, and the analogies between light and sound. We know that in dreams the mind often creates images and ideas which it would be totally unable to produce by the agency of the will.

II

In the very same room where Peter was born, no sound could be heard save the wailing cry of an infant. A few days had passed since its birth, and Evelyn was rapidly recovering. But Peter still seemed depressed, as though weighed down by the presentiment of some impending misfortune.

The doctor taking the child in his arms carried him to the window. Quickly drawing aside the curtain and admitting a bright sunbeam into the room, he took his instruments and bent at once over the boy. Peter was also in the room, apathetic and depressed, with his head drooping low. He seemed