But it seemed as if each note possessed for the blind boy an attribute peculiar to itself. When beneath the pressure of his finger a brilliant note of the upper register rang out, a glow would come upon his face, uplifted as if to follow the ringing note in its upward flight; but when he touched a deep bass-note, he stooped to listen,—seeming to feel sure that the heavy note must be rolling along the ground, scattering itself all over the floor, to be finally lost in the corners.
X.
Uncle Maxim simply tolerated all these musical experiments. Strange though it may seem, the inclinations which had so unmistakably manifested themselves in the boy excited mingled emotions in the breast of the old soldier. On the one hand, this intense passion for music indicated the boy’s inherent musical talent, and foreshadowed a possible career; but in spite of this, a vague sense of disappointment filled Uncle Maxim’s heart.
“It cannot be denied,” thus ran Maxim’s thoughts, “that music is a power by which a man may sway the hearts of the multitude. He, the blind man, will attract dandies and fashionable women by the hundreds, will play a valse or a nocturne,”—here Uncle Maxim’s musical vocabulary came suddenly to an end,—“and they will wipe away their tears with their delicate handkerchiefs. Ah, the deuce take it! that is not what I could have wished for him. But what’s to be done about it? The fellow is blind; he must do what he can with his life. But if it had only been singing! A song speaks not alone to the fastidious ear,—it excites fancies, arouses thoughts in the mind, and kindles courage in the heart.”
“Look here, Joachim,” Uncle Maxim said one evening, as he followed the blind boy into the stable, “do for once stop that whistling! It might do well enough for a street urchin, or for the shepherd boy in the field; but you are a grown-up peasant, although that silly Màrya has made a calf of you. Fie! I am really ashamed of you! The lass proved hard-hearted, and that has made you so soft that you whistle like a quail caught in a net.”
As he listened in the darkness to this sharp tirade from the Pan, Joachim smiled at his unnecessary indignation. But he did feel somewhat wounded by his allusion to the street urchin and the shepherd boy, and replied,—
“Don’t say that, Pan! Not a shepherd in the Ukraine has a pipe like that, let alone the shepherd boy. Theirs are nothing but whistles; but mine—just listen!” He closed all the openings with his fingers, and struck the two notes of the octave, drinking in as he did so the fullness of the tones.
Maxim spat. “The Lord have mercy on us, the lad has lost his wits! What do I care for your pipe? They are all alike, both pipes and women, with your Màrya into the bargain! You had better sing us a song, if you know how,—a good song of our fathers’ or grandfathers’.”
Maxim Yatzènko, a Little Russian himself, was simple and unassuming in his manners toward peasants and servants. Although he often scolded and shouted at them, he never hurt any man’s feelings; and while his inferiors were on familiar terms with him, they never failed to treat him with respect. Hence to the Pan’s request, Joachim replied,—