“Faith of my fathers!” she exclaimed, backing away from her mistress. “Madame needn’t yell like that. Take my good ear,” and she turned her right toward Mrs. Browne, “and I hear fairly well. I don’t know the Scholaskies. Shall I dust now? I see some on the furniture.”
Mrs. Browne nodded, and the old woman began her dusting, moving very slowly, and not letting a particle escape her, I was sure. Addressing us again, but watching her servant narrowly, to see that she was doing her duty, Mrs. Browne continued:
“These Scholaskies could not be disreputable, or Alex would have heard of them. She knows everything, deaf as she is. She was highly recommended by a titled English family, who had her for a short time, but long enough to know her value. She is old, to be sure, though not as old as she looks, I imagine. I have never asked her age. She was worked to death as a serf on a farm when young—was abused, I believe, though she never talks about it. She does not talk much, anyway, and is true as steel to her friends, poor thing! She has had so few. I asked her once if she had seen a great deal of trouble, and she replied, ‘I have been in hell; don’t ask me any more.’ Dreadful, wasn’t it? I dare say they beat her on the farm. They used to, before the emancipation, you know.”
I began to think I should never get the Scholaskies in, if Mrs. Browne kept on with her eulogy of Alex, when there came a little break, as Mrs. Browne went forward to show Alex a spot of dust she had missed.
“I know the Scholaskies,” I said. “They once lived here. They were nihilists, all of them—father, mother, son and daughter!”
As Alex was not near enough to lean upon, Mrs. Browne fell back into her chair, with a scream which Alex’s good ear must have heard, for she came at once to her mistress, asking what she could do for her, and fanning her with the feather duster she had been using, the effect of which was to make the lady sneeze vigorously.
“Go ‘way—go ‘way!” she said, pushing Alex aside; then, turning to me, she continued: “You must excuse me, I have such delicate nerves. It is in our family. But tell me what you know of the Scholaskies.”
I told her of meeting Sophie on the train; of all she was to us as a friend; of the evening when, with my nephew and niece, I sat in that room, playing whist, and a gendarme came in——
“In here? In this room?” and there was a gurgling sound in her throat, as she called for Alex, whose good ear was at the end of the room, and did not hear. “Go on,” she said, at last. “I shall throw up the lease. Gendarmes and nihilists both in this room!”
I went on and told her the whole story, in which she at last became greatly interested, especially in the arrest on the Neva.