Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/570

 562 alarmingly. Herr Popp’s method was held throughout Germany to be a short and very safe road to cure.

III. Norah Malone, aged thirty-three, governess and companion.

What Miss Malone thought of her employer and pupil, would be difficult to arrive at, even after an acute study of the lady’s countenance. Except a flash now and then from her dark eyes, and a warm glow on her cheeks that would come and go as quickly as the flash, she never gave signs either of pleasure or anger. That she was often tried to the utmost by old Paul’s whims and by Sasha’s self-will, was plain to everybody—that she never resented these by any words spoken in or out of season, nobody could deny,—yet for so much patience, for so much good temper, for so much thoughtful attention, was it not strange that she gained no praise?

Miss Malone was one of those women who have no fault-finders and no friends among her own sex. Women admired her in spite of themselves. Her pupil, who was herself pretty and vain, would say sometimes, “I would rather be straight and tall and handsome as you are, than have all the money in the world,” knowing all the while that in her own heart she hated her. In this way people atoned for their injustice to her good qualities.

Perhaps this little family party was not the happiest in the world. At any rate such was the conclusion drawn by those members of Herr Popp’s establishment who held intercourse with them during the first week of their stay. Sometimes Mademoiselle Sasha would speak to her grand-papa in disrespectful terms of the barley soup and unchangeable veal cutlets, or would make a moue of disdain after her first taste of the wine—at which, if the old man were in a good temper, he would only swear quietly in Russian and tell her to hold her peace. If he were irate, which Sasha liked best, he kept up a constant small shot of provocations throughout the meal. The girl enjoyed his ill-temper more than the servants—that was evident, or why did she always try to enrage him?

Sometimes Miss Malone would be fired at with his biggest guns, because she had allowed Sasha to walk in the park where the officers were exercising, or worse still, to cross the street by herself on her way to the baths. All this the poor lady bore with Christian fortitude, as the newspapers say, and marvellous to tell, though old Paul Jansiewich could never succeed in aggravating her into an outward passion, he liked her. A fiery-tempered man liked a woman who was no less fiery, but who could show him her way of victory, by an apparent calm, mirabile dictu—for most people cordially hate those whom they cannot provoke—when they try. I don’t mean to say that there are not some easy souls among us, but with the others there is a rule of this kind.

It is necessary to speak a few words about Alexandrina’s education, to which was paid no ordinary attention. In the first place she had Miss Malone, who constantly spoke English (tinctured with Hibernian), out of school hours, and instructed her in the proprieties, no ill-timed instruction to the unsophisticated young Russian. Miss Malone taught her that it was not polite to put one’s knife in one’s mouth, to come down-stairs to breakfast without having touched the water in one’s hand-basin, to be utterly oblivious on the subject of boot-laces and other laces, &c. Perhaps a governess in England would be rather surprised if she were complimented on having instilled into her pupil’s mind the rudiments of tidiness and cleanliness—but I assure you to have instilled such into the mind of pretty Mademoiselle Sasha, was no small triumph, and Miss Malone had won it. Then, besides this lady’s instructions in English, she joined Herr Popp’s other pupils in German, French, and music classes, learned a great deal of natural philosophy and metaphysics to the utter exclusion of spelling, as is the fashion in Germany, lay on the sofa a stated number of hours every day in some kind of armour which was supposed to straighten the slight curve of her right shoulder, and by many other devices, satisfied the heart of old Paul Jansiewich that she would be the cleverest and prettiest woman of her time.

“She’ll be quite attractive enough to be married for her looks, and not for her money,” he said to himself often. “Money, indeed, I should like to see Sasha married for her money!” And he chuckled over the last words and thought that he should live for no end of years to enjoy what her husband ought to have.

It never once occurred to him that he might not live long enough to cheat this imaginary person.

Jansiewich party arrived in Cannstatt during the first week of October. This week marks an era in scholastic life there, for the King’s birthday and the Volk’s Fest, or People’s Festival, attending it, bring a time of holiday to everybody, and new masters and new scholars are entered upon the lists when the general rejoicing is over.

People of every class and of every nation are left behind also. English, French, Dutch, Belgians, Saxon—each friendly nationality leaves its representatives, who dwindle away by degrees, like wasps when the plum season is over.

With only one of these representatives, however, have we any concern.

Though Herr Popp’s establishment consisted of a hundred patient-pupils, the Jansiewich family were as private as if they occupied a house of their own, with the exception of meeting pupils and governesses on the stairs or in the grounds, and a daily visit from the haus frau, Madame Roser. Many of the pupils who were sent from a distance lived together precisely as in an ordinary boarding-school; but Sasha showed no wish to make acquaintances, and she was therefore not aware when she went into the class-room to take her French lesson, that a new master sat on the stool of authority.

The class-room was a long naked apartment, containing no furniture but an oblong table painted blue, with benches placed round it, and a chair at the head for the master. When Miss