He understood why the decrepit and homeless old beggar-women sobbed in the dismal autumn wind, as they shivered in their rags in the crowded graveyard, among the crumbling crosses and the hopelessly black tombs.
There was self-forgetfulness in this, and also tormenting woe!
Volodya's mother observed that he continued to play.
She said to him after dinner: "At least, you might get interested in something else."
"No sooner do I begin to read than I want to cast shadows."
"If you'd only try something else--say soap-bubbles."
"No sooner do the bubbles fly up than the shadows follow them on the wall."
"Volodya, unless you take care your nerves will be shattered. Already you have grown thinner because of this."
"No, Volodya.... Don't I know that you've begun to sleep badly and to talk nonsense in your sleep. Now, just think, suppose you die!"
"God forbid, but if you go mad, or die, I shall suffer horribly."
Volodya laughed and threw himself on his mother's neck.
"Mamma dear, I shan't die. I won't do it again."
"That will do," she said. "God is merciful. Now you see how nervous you are. You're laughing and crying at the same time."
Volodya's mother began to look at him with careful and anxious eyes. Every trifle now agitated her.
She noticed that Volodya's head was somewhat asymmetrical: his one ear was higher than the other, his chin slightly turned to one side. She looked in the mirror, and further remarked that Volodya had inherited this too from her.
"It may be," she thought, "one of the characteristics of unfortunate heredity--degeneration; in which case where is the root of the evil? Is it my fault or his father's?"
Eugenia Stepanovna recalled her dead husband. He was a most kind-hearted and most lovable man, somewhat weak-willed, with rash impulses. He was by nature a zealot and a mystic, and he dreamt of a social Utopia, and went among the people. He had been rather given to tippling the last years of his life.
He died young; he was but thirty-five years old.
Volodya's mother even took her boy to the doctor and described his symptoms. The doctor, a cheerful young man, listened to her, then laughed and gave counsel concerning diet and way of life, throwing in a few witty remarks; he wrote out a prescription in a happy, off-hand way, and he added playfully, with a slap on Volodya's shoulder: "But the very best medicine would be--a birch."