Читать книгу "O Thou, My Austria!" - Ossip Schubin - Страница 14

Every Sunday the Komaritzers come to us at Zirkow, driving over in a tumble-down old coach covered with faded blue cloth, hung on spiral springs, and called Noah's ark.

The coachman wears no livery, except such as can be found in an imposing broad gold band upon a very shabby high hat.

Of course the children are always accompanied by the governess and the tutor.

The first governess whom I knew at Komaritz--Mademoiselle Duval--was bright, well-bred, and very lovable; the tutor was the opposite of all this.

He may have been a proficient in ancient languages, but he spoke very poor German. His nails were always in mourning, and he neglected his dress. Intercourse with good society made him melancholy. At our table he always took the worst place. Uncle Paul every Sunday addressed the same two questions to him, never remembering his name, but regularly calling him Herr Paulus, whereas his name was Pontius. After the tutor had answered these questions humbly, he never again, so long as dinner lasted, opened his mouth, except to put into it large mouthfuls, or his knife. Between the courses he twirled his thumbs and sniffed. He always had a cold in his head. When dinner was over he pushed his chair back against the wall, bowed awkwardly, and retired, never appearing among us during the rest of the afternoon, which he spent playing "Pinch" with Krupitschka, with a pack of dirty cards which from long usage had lost their corners and had become oval. We often surprised him at this amusement,--Harry and I.

As soon as he disappeared Aunt Rosamunda always expressed loudly and distinctly her disapproval of his bad manners. But when we children undertook to sneer at them, we were sternly repressed,--were told that such things were of no consequence, and that bad manners did not in the least detract from a human being's genuine worth.

On one occasion Harry rejoined, "I'm glad to hear it," and at the next meal sat with both elbows upon the table.

Moreover, I soon observed that Herr Pontius was by no means the meek lamb he seemed to be, and this I discovered at the harvest-home. There was a dance beneath the lindens at the farm, where Herr Pontius whirled the peasant-girls around, and capered about like a very demon. His face grew fierce, and his hair floated wildly about his head. We children nearly died of laughing at him.

Soon afterwards he was dismissed, and in a great hurry. When I asked Harry to tell me the cause of his sudden disappearance, he replied that it was love that had broken Herr Pontius's neck. But when I insisted upon a more lucid explanation, Harry touched the tip of my nose with his forefinger and said, sententiously, "Too much knowledge makes little girls ugly."

He was not the only one among Harry's tutors whose neck was broken through love: the next--a very model of a tutor--followed the example in this respect of the dance-loving Herr Pontius.

His name was Ephraim Schmied; he came from Hildesheim, and was very learned and well conducted,--in short, by long odds the best of all Harry's tutors. If he did not retain his position, it may well be imagined that it was the fault of the position.

As with every other fresh tutor, Harry set himself in opposition to him at first, and did his best to discover ridiculous traits in him. His efforts in this direction were for a time productive of no results, and Herr Schmied, thanks to his untiring patience combined with absolute firmness, was in a fair way to master his wayward pupil, when matters took an unexpected and unfortunate turn.

Harry, in fact, had finally discovered the weak place in Herr Schmied's armour, and it was in the region of the heart. Herr Schmied had fallen in love with Mademoiselle Duval. To fall in love was in Harry's eyes at that time the extreme of human stupidity (he ought to have rested in that conviction). Uncle Paul shared it. He chuckled when Harry one fine day told him of his discovery, and asked the keen-sighted young good-for-naught upon what he founded his supposition.

"He sings Schubert's 'Wanderer' to her every evening, and yesterday he brought her a vase from X----," Harry replied: "there the fright stands."

Uncle Paul took the vase in his hands, an odd smile playing about his mouth the while. It was decorated with little naked Cupids hopping about in an oval wreath of forget-me-nots.

"How sentimental!" said Uncle Paul, adding, after a while, "If the little wretches only had wings, they might pass for angels, but as they are they leave something to be desired." Then, putting down the vase, he told me to be a good girl (he had just brought me over to stay a little while at Komaritz), got into his dog-cart, and drove off.

Scarcely had the door closed behind him when Harry brought from the next room a long quill pen and a large inkstand, and went to work eagerly and mysteriously at the vase.

At about five in the afternoon all assembled for afternoon coffee. Finally Herr Schmied appeared, a book in his hand.

"What are you doing there?" he asked his pupil, unsuspectingly.

"I am giving these naughty boys swimming-breeches, Herr Schmied. Uncle Paul thought it hardly the thing for you to have presented this vase to a lady, and so----"

The sentence was never finished. There was a low laugh from the other end of the room, where Mademoiselle Duval, ensconced behind the coffee-equipage, had been an unobserved spectator of the scene. Herr Schmied flushed crimson, and, quite losing his usual self-control, he gave Harry a sounding box on the ear, and Harry--well, Harry returned it.

Herr Schmied seized him by the shoulders as if to shake and strike him, then bit his lip, drew a long breath, released the boy, and left the room. But Harry's head drooped upon his breast, and he ate no supper that night. He knew that what had occurred could not be condoned, and he was sorry.

At supper Herr Schmied informed Mademoiselle Duval that he had written to Baron Leskjewitsch that unforeseen circumstances made imperative his return to Germany. "I did not think it necessary to be more explicit as to the true cause of my sudden departure," he added.

Harry grew very pale.

After supper, as I was sitting with Heda upon the garden-steps, looking for falling stars that would not fall, we observed Herr Schmied enter the room behind us; it was quite empty, but the lamp was lighted on the table. Soon afterwards, Harry appeared. Neither of them noticed us.

Slowly, lingeringly, Harry approached his tutor, and plucked him by the sleeve.

Herr Schmied looked around.

"Must you really go away, Herr Schmied?" the boy asked, in distress.

"Yes," the tutor replied, very gravely.

Harry bit his lip, seemed undecided what to do or say, and finally, leaning his head a little on one side, asked, caressingly, "Even if I beg your pardon?"

Herr Schmied smiled, surprised and touched. He took the boy's hand in his, and said, sadly, "Even then, Harry. Yet I am sorry, for I was beginning to be very fond of you."

The tears were in Harry's eyes, but he evidently felt that no entreaty would be of any avail.

In fact, the next morning Herr Schmied took his departure. A few days afterwards, however, Harry received a letter from him with a foreign post-mark. He had written four long pages to his former pupil. Harry flushed with pride and joy as he read it, and answered it that very evening.

Herr Schmied is now Professor of Modern History in a foreign university, his name is well known, and he is held in high honour. He still corresponds with Harry, whose next tutor was a French abbé. The cause of the abbé's dismissal I have forgotten; indeed, I remember only one more among the numerous preceptors, and he was the last,--a German from Bohemia, called Ewald Finke.

His name was not really Ewald, but Michael, but he called himself Ewald because he liked it better. He had studied abroad, which always impressed us favourably, and, as Uncle Karl was told, he had already won some reputation in Leipsic by his literary efforts. He was looking for a situation as tutor merely that he might have some rest from intellectual labours that had been excessive. "Moreover," his letter of recommendation from a well-known professor went on to say, "the Herr Baron will not be slow to discover that he is here brought into contact with a rarely-gifted nature, one of those in intercourse with whom allowance must be made for certain peculiarities which at first may prove rather annoying." Uncle Karl instantly wrote, in reply, that "annoying peculiarities" were of no consequence,--that he would accord unlimited credit in the matter of allowance to the new tutor. In fact, he took such an interest in the genius thus offered him that he prolonged his stay in Komaritz to two weeks, instead of departing at the end of three days, as he had at first intended, solely in expectation of the new tutor.

By the way, those who are familiar with my uncle's morbid restlessness may imagine the joy of his household at his prolonged stay in Komaritz.

Not knowing how otherwise to kill his time, he hit upon the expedient of shooting it, and, as the hunting season had not begun, he shot countless butterflies. We found them lying in heaps among the flowers, little, shapeless, shrivelled things, mere specks of brilliant dust. When weary of this amusement, he would seat himself at the piano and play over and over again the same dreary air, grasping uncertainly at the chords, and holding them long and firmly when once he had got them.

Harry assured me that he was playing a funeral march for the dead butterflies, and I supposed it to be his own composition. This, however, was not the case, and the piece was not a funeral march, but a polonaise,--"The Last Thought of Count Oginski," who is said to have killed himself after jotting down this music.

At last Herr Finke made his appearance. He was a tall, beardless young man, with hair cut close to his head, and a sallow face adorned with the scars of several sabre-cuts, a large mouth, a pointed nose, the nostrils quivering with critical scorn, and staring black eyes with large round spectacles, through which they saw only what they chose to see.

Uncle Karl's reception of him was grandiloquent. "Enter," he exclaimed, going to meet him with extended hands. "My house is open to you. I delight in grand natures which refuse to be cramped within the limits of conventionality."

Herr Finke replied to this high-sounding address only by a rather condescending nod, shaking the proffered hand as if bestowing a favour.

After he had been refreshed with food and drink, Uncle Karl challenged him to a fencing-match, which lasted upward of an hour, at the end of which time my uncle confessed that the new tutor was a master of fence, immediately wrote to thank the illustrious professor to whom he owed this treasure of learning, and left Komaritz that same evening.

Herr Finke remained precisely three weeks in his new situation. So far as lessons went he seemed successful enough, but his "annoying peculiarities" ended in an outbreak of positive insanity, during which he set fire to the frame house on the hill where he was lodged, and was carried off to a mad-house in a strait-waistcoat, raving wildly.

Uncle Karl was sadly disappointed, and suddenly resolved to send Harry to a public school, being convinced that no good could come of tutors.

From this time forward the young Leskjewitsches came to Komaritz only for the vacations.