Lucy Harding

CHAPTER III. THE DOG CHANCE.

As the sun was not down—for we were in the midst of the long, northern days, when darkness and daylight almost kiss each other in a parting embrace—I suggested that we take a little stroll and look at St. Isaac’s and other points of interest. As we were leaving the hotel, we met the gendarme, Michel, who, I found, came often to the hotel, inquiring after passports and any newcomers, or those who had changed their quarters. A civil bow was all I awarded him, as I hurried outside, where I found my friends crowded around a huge mastiff, sitting upon his haunches, as if waiting for some one—his master, probably. He was of a species which, in America, we call a Russian collie, and esteem for their fidelity and gentleness. He was the handsomest dog I had ever seen, with his fine, intelligent face, and long, silky mane, and, as I was fond of animals of all kinds, I stooped to caress him, while he beat his bushy tail in token of appreciation and good will.

34“You are a beauty,” I said. “I wonder whose dog you are, and what is your name?”

“Chance, and he belongs to me,” came in quick response, which made the dog start up, while I turned to meet the drooping eyes of the gendarme fixed on me with a quizzical expression.

“Chance,” I repeated, still keeping my hand buried in the soft wool of the animal, who was stamping his feet and shaking his head, as if ready for action of some kind, if he only knew what it was. “Chance,” I said, again. “It is a strange name for a Russian dog. I had a little poodle, years ago, which I called Chance. I’ve never heard the name since.”

“No, it is not common; and it came to him from a friend,” the man replied. “He is a noble fellow. His grandmother was from the royal kennels, so, you see, he has kingly blood in him. I was offered a thousand dollars for him by one of your countrymen, and would not take it. He is young, but is already my factotum on whom I depend.”

“Do you mean he is like a bloodhound, whom you put on the track of the poor wretches you are hired to run down?” I asked, thinking of Nicol Patoff, and recoiling 35from the dog, who put up his big paw, as if to shake my hand, and thus conciliate me.

The gendarme laughed, and replied: “I have little need of a dog, except in case of murder. If the czar were killed, for instance, and the assassin were hiding, I might call in Chance’s help; and he would find him, too, if he had ever seen him before, or anything belonging to him. You are not afraid of him?”

“No,” I answered, and, before I could say more, the officer continued, to the dog: “Salute the lady!”

In an instant two great paws were on my shoulders, and Chance was looking into my face, with an expression so human that I began to feel cold and sick, and tried to free myself from him, and in my effort dropped my handkerchief.

“Down, Chance! That will do,” his master said, and then to us: “He will know you now wherever he meets you, especially after I have shown him this.”

He had picked up my handkerchief, a soiled and torn one, I saw, with a pang, and, handing it to the dog, bade him give it to Miss Harding. He mastered the “H,” and I was not a “Garden” to him. Obediently, Chance brought it to me, shaking his head and holding it a while in his teeth, as if loath to let it go.

36“It is all right,” the gendarme said, taking it from the dog, but not returning it to me. “Chance has looked on your face,” he continued, “and smelled an article of your wardrobe. I could track you now to Siberia, if necessary, if I had this handkerchief to show him.”

I shuddered, and put out my hand to take my property, but, with a kind of authoritative air I had never seen in him before, he put it in his pocket, saying, quietly: “Allow me to keep it as a means of safety to you and your party. I have met many Americans; they are all alike; they wish to see everything, and go everywhere, and never think of danger, or, if they do, it does not deter them. That Dutch guide of yours, lounging on a settee and smoking cigarettes, is no good. He will take to vodka next, and be more stupid than ever. Madame, with her knowledge of Russian, is a better guide than he. May as well give him up, and run your own canoe. You see, I am up in Yankee slang. I have heard a good deal of it. But don’t risk too much. St. Petersburg is as safe as most cities, but be a little cautious where you go and when you go. As a rule, our women are not often seen in the streets unattended. But we expect different things from tourists, particularly Americans, who dare anything to satisfy their curiosity. 37You are intending to go out this evening, and the sun is nearly down. Wait till to-morrow, and, if Chance happens to join you, don’t think it strange, either to-morrow or next day. In the summer, when the city is full of sightseers and the court and nobility are away, there is frequently a set of impostors and marauders from the country, who come into town for theft and spoil, thinking to find the visitors an easy prey. Chance knows them by instinct, and will keep them at a distance. If he growls, you will know there is danger, and the beggar a fraud.”

He turned abruptly and was gone, followed by Chance, bounding at his side and occasionally picking up a stick, or whatever he could find, and taking it to his master, expecting it to be thrown for him to catch and take back. For a moment we watched him in silence; then the tongues of the party were loosened, and they began to wonder why this gendarme had seemingly taken us under his protection and given us the service of his dog. I offered no opinion. I was still morbidly jealous for the safety of Nicol Patoff, if he were alive and on Russian soil, as I thought probable, and Michel Seguin’s interest in us was really centered in me, with a hope that he might yet learn something of his enemy. It was a 38part of his method, which usually proved successful, but would fail for once.

It was beginning to get a little chilly, and I suggested that we should return to the hotel. We found our guide, Henri, snoring loudly, with his mouth open, his arms falling at his side and a half-burned cigarette held fast between his thumb and fingers.

“The lout! We ought to get rid of him; he is of no earthly use, except to draw his pay. We do not need him. You can do all he can, and more, too; and then we shall have Chance,” my companions said, as we went to our rooms.

As a result of this conversation, after a few days, during which Henri showed a greater liking for vodka than for attending to us, we separated by mutual consent, but not until he had done some pretty hard swearing, saying “he was not hired to carry the satchels and shawl straps and wraps and umbrellas of eight old maids, no two of whom wished to see the same thing at the same time, or go to the same place, and who were the hardest-to-please women it had ever been his lot to conduct.” “Red-head,” as he called me, was the worst of all, and, if she didn’t look out, she would find herself in the clutches of the 39police, romping round as she did, looking into everything and talking to everybody.

We laughed, and left him to his vodka and his pipe and cigarettes, and his stupid sleep in the armchair of the office, from which he occasionally roused enough to inquire about the “eight old maids, and what they were up to now.”

CHAPTER IV. NICOL’S HOUSE.

We had been told that the time to visit St. Petersburg was in the winter, when the city is in its glory. The nobility have then returned from their summer homes. The czar is at his palace. The Nevsky Prospect is gay with equipages of every description, from the common sledge to the carriages of the aristocracy, while the Neva, frozen to the thickness of three or four feet, rivals the Nevsky, with its crowds of sledges and skates and lookers-on, its colored lights, its bazaars and booths filled with a laughing crowd till long after the coachmen and horses, who have stood for hours in the cold before the Winter Palace, where a ball was in progress, have gone home.

All this I saw later, and was a part of most of it during my second visit to St. Petersburg; but now, not knowing the difference, I was satisfied to be there in the summer, although the streets seemed deserted, and most of the great houses were closed, or left in charge of a few old domestics, who were faithful to their trust as 41watchdogs. The czar, with his family, was at Gatschina, in the great, gloomy palace, where I was told that, although there were six hundred rooms, the royal family confined themselves to only six, as they could thus feel more secure from attacks of nihilists. Whether this was true or not, I do not know. One hears many wonderful rumors in St. Petersburg of plots and counterplots, and prying gendarmes, and arrests and banishment to the fortress or Siberia; but these did not concern us. We were there to see, and we made good our time, going everywhere we could go, and pushing our way into some places which at first seemed impossible to enter.

And nearly always Chance was with us. Just where he came from I did not at first know. We usually found him outside the hotel waiting for us, and attaching himself to me as if I were his mistress. His master we did not see until the fifth day, when we met him in front of the house where Nicol Patoff had once lived. I remembered the number on the card Nicol had given me, and was anxious to visit it alone, to inspect it at my leisure, and possibly ring the bell boldly, and ask if the Patoff family were at home. But this I could not do, for, as I 42was the only one who spoke the language, it seemed necessary that our party should keep together.

Still, I must see the house, and give it more than a passing glance, and at last I took the ladies into my confidence, telling them why I wished particularly to see the place. None of them had ever heard of Nicol, except the girls from Ridgefield, and, as these were much younger than myself, they only knew of him as some one who taught in the academy for a time and then disappeared. They were, however, ready to go with me, and on a sunny afternoon we started along the Nevsky on our tour of discovery, with our escort, Chance, who seemed to know just where we were going, and forged ahead at a rapid pace until he reached the Patoff house, where he stopped and waited for us to come up.

It was very large, and built of brick, as are most of the houses in St. Petersburg. In front was the inevitable porter, or servant, of the proprietor, who keeps guard over the premises and over all who come in or go out. The one of our party most interested in Nicol Patoff after myself was Mary, my roommate, who was usually bubbling with enthusiasm, and who thought it would be great fun if we could get inside a real Russian house, and see what it was like.

43“Aren’t you going to ask that porter if Mr. Patoff lives here? He looks harmless and sleepy,” she said, while Chance was making various signs that he expected us to enter.

What I might have done I do not know, if upon the scene a new actor had not appeared, in the person of the gendarme Michel, who came upon us rather suddenly, as we stood huddled together on the sidewalk. There was no mistaking the pleasure on his face when he saw us.

“Good-afternoon!” he said, speaking in English. “Sight-seeing, I suppose? What place are you bound for now, if I may ask? I hope you find Chance a good escort. I tell him every morning to find Miss Harding, and he goes;” and he patted the head of the beautiful dog, who began to leap upon him, with little cries of delight.

This, then, was the reason why Chance always came to me when he appeared at the hotel. My handkerchief, which the gendarme still kept, was the cue which guided him, and I ought to have been flattered, but I was not, for I always felt as if there was something sinister behind the officer’s attentions which I could not fathom. It was Mary who replied, in her breezy way:

“Chance is splendid; he goes with us everywhere, and 44just now we are looking at the house where Nicol Patoff used to live, and where, perhaps, he lives now.”

I tried to catch her eyes, and stop her, but she was turned partly from me, and went on: “Do you know who lives here?”

“Not Patoff,” the gendarme said, with the same expression I had seen on his face when I spoke of Nicol on the boat. Then he added, quickly: “Do you, too, know Nicol Patoff?”

“Oh, no,” Mary replied. “I was a little girl when he taught in Ridgefield. Miss Harding was his favorite pupil, and that is why she speaks Russian so well. I have heard he was a splendid-looking man, with an air of mystery about him. Some thought him a nihilist. Do you know him, and was he a nihilist?”

I gave a gasp as I waited for the answer, which was spoken very deliberately: “He was a nihilist, and has given me a great deal of trouble.”

“Are you trying to find him?” was Mary’s next remark. “Why don’t you put Chance on his track?”

I was very fond of the girl, but I could have throttled her to hear her speaking thus of Nicol Patoff, and suggesting that Chance be put to find him.

45“Mary!” I exclaimed. “Are you crazy, to suggest so diabolical an act? Nicol Patoff was a gentleman! What has he done to you that you should wish to throw him into the hands of his foes, and have him condemned, unheard, and sentenced either to the fortress or to Siberia, where every foot of the soil has been wet with the tears of exiles, some guilty, of course, but more innocent!”

“Madame is very eloquent in her defense of Nicol Patoff, and her tirade against our government,” the gendarme said, and I answered:

“Eloquent for the right, you mean! Nicol Patoff was my friend, and incapable of crime, unless it was that of detesting your atrocious government, which I do most heartily. I am glad I am an American, and not a Russian, subject to your laws!”

Womanlike, I was half crying, and my voice sounded croaky, and I hated myself for it, and hated the gendarme, who was certainly laughing at me, while my companions stood aghast, wondering what would be the result of my outburst. We had nothing to fear, for however stern and uncompromising the gendarme might be in the discharge of his duty, he was very kind to us, and, after I ceased speaking, he said: “If I ever find Patoff, and I may do so, I will tell him your opinion of 46him and our government. It will please him vastly, if all I know of him is true.”

“What do you know of him?” I demanded. “You have questioned us about him, and now I ask you, what has he done?”

“Nothing which I can tell you now,” was the good-humored reply. “I can only tell you what you probably know—that this is the house you are looking for, but no Patoffs live here now.” He hesitated a moment, then added: “It belongs to my family—to me! Would you like to go in?”

We had stood upon the sidewalk so long that the few passers-by began to look at us curiously and with suspicion, as if the presence in our midst of a gendarme boded evil to some of us, and one or two stopped to see what would follow. It was to me that Michel had addressed his invitation, and before I could answer and decline, as I meant to do, although I wished very much to see Nicol’s old home, he said: “It is perfectly proper for you to do so. Tourists not infrequently visit private houses when the owner is gone—for a compensation, of course. In this case there is no compensation. The owner is here, and invites you to enter. Will you come?”

47“Yes, Miss Lucy, do. It will be something to tell at home,” Mary entreated, while Chance leaped upon me and then ran ahead, as if he were adding his invitation to his master’s.

I could not well resist, and gave a rather unwilling assent, wondering whom we should meet inside—what woman, I meant. This question was soon settled by the gendarme, who said, as he ushered us into a long reception room, which, to my Yankee eyes, looked untidy and uncared for: “You must excuse whatever is amiss, and I am afraid there is a great deal out of order, according to your code of housekeeping. I am just now living a bachelor’s life, as my mother has gone into the country for the summer, and Russian servants are not like the Yankees. I don’t suppose the house has all been swept since she went away. Now, what would you like to see most?” he asked, as we stood looking around us rather awkwardly.

“Oh, everything,” Mary replied; “the bedrooms and the kitchen. I’ve heard the latter was awful; not yours, especially, but everybody’s.”

She was certainly irrepressible and rude, and I tried to stop her, but the gendarme, who seemed pleased with her sprightliness, laughed good-naturedly, and said: “You 48are right, I think, and a Russian kitchen is a terror, particularly when the mistress is gone, and Chance and I keep house. As to bedrooms, my mother and I are civilized enough each to have one, but in some grand houses the master and mistress ignore such trivial things as bedrooms, and sleep on couches improvised as beds, while the servants sleep on the floor, or where they can find a place.”

“Horrible!” was Mary’s exclamation, as she held up her short dress, as if fearful of contamination.

Evidently the gendarme was proud of his house, leaving the kitchen out of the question. That we did not see, nor madame’s bedroom, nor his; but he took us through suites of rooms on the walls of which were some fine pictures, while the massive furniture had once been very handsome and costly. But the heavy brocade upholsterings were faded and frayed; the solid rosewood and mahogany tables and chairs were tarnished and scratched; there was dust everywhere, and one of the small, silken couches was evidently Chance’s bed, when he chose to make it so, for he sprang upon it and lay down, with his tongue lolling and his eyes watching us intently.

“I think it awful untidy. Where are the servants, I 49wonder?” Mary said to me, in a low tone, but not so low that the gendarme did not hear her, and reply: “I think it is rather untidy, but mother will soon right it up when she comes; she is a raging housekeeper. As to servants, there are plenty of them, such as they are. I dare say the most of them are asleep in the sunshine.”

Up to this time I had said but little. Something was choking me, as I went through the rooms where Nicol used to live, and I tried to imagine him there, with his fastidious ideas and his dainty dress, free from spot or blemish.

“It must have been different then,” I thought, and I said: “Mr. Patoff told me they sometimes had as many as forty servants in his day.”

“Oh, yes,” the gendarme replied. “No doubt of it. I think we at one time had sixty, before the emancipation of the serfs, when labor cost nothing.”

“Sixty!” Mary repeated. “Why, at home if we have one we do well. What did sixty do?”

“I hardly know,” the gendarme answered her. “I think they fell over each other, and quarreled, mostly, and only did one thing, and then their duties were over for that day. We have fewer servants now and better service.”

50Mary arched her eyebrows, as she looked around for signs of service, and finally wrote with her finger the word “shiftless” in the dust which lay thickly on the highly polished surface of a handsome inlaid table. If the gendarme saw it, he made no sign, but took us to the next floor through other rooms filled with old and expensive furniture, but in none of which I could have sat down with a homelike feeling. I was beginning to get tired, and showed it, when he said: “I must take you to my den, and then I am through.”

He opened a door into a large, airy room looking out upon the Nevsky and the Neva.

“This is something like it!” Mary exclaimed, pirouetting across the floor and seating herself in a large easy-chair near the window. “This is like home,” and she looked around her admiringly.

“I am glad you like it. I come here to rest after a worry with passports and nihilists,” the gendarme said, with a look which was lost on me.

My attention had been attracted from the first by a full-length portrait of a young man hanging over the mantel.

“Nicol Patoff!” I exclaimed, clasping my hands with a firm grip, and feeling the tears spring to my eyes, as 51my thoughts went back to the old schoolroom, the lessons learned there, and the handsome young Russian whom this portrait brought so vividly to my mind.

It must have been taken before he came to America, when he was not more than twenty, but there was no mistaking the fair, smooth face, the lines of the mouth just breaking into a laugh, or the expression of the soft, brown eyes, with that far-away look in them.

“You recognize it?” the gendarme said, and I answered, quickly: “Recognize it! Of course I do! I should know Nicol wherever I met him, whether in his old home or in the wilds of Siberia. He was younger when this was taken than when I knew him. He is an old man now.”

“Yes, very old,” the gendarme replied, sarcastically. “Forty-five, at least. Old enough to die, if he is not already dead.”

By this time my companions had crowded around the picture, commenting upon it and wondering where the original was, and how his portrait came into the possession of the Seguins. It was Mary, as usual, who asked direct questions.

“Funny his portrait should be here, if he had anywhere 52to put it. How came you by it, and where is he?” she asked.

The gendarme did not answer at once, but seemed to be considering what to say. Then he suddenly grew very communicative.

“As you are so interested in the Patoffs, and some of you knew Nicol,” he said, “I may tell you that the family was once very wealthy, but reverses came, and they sold this house to us, with all there was in it. They were leaving the city for Constantinople, and did not care to take anything with them. Some time they might return, they said, but they never have.” He was sitting near an old-fashioned writing desk of mahogany, and, putting his hand upon it, he continued: “This was Nicol’s desk, and in it are some souvenirs he must have picked up in America, and perhaps forgot to take with him, or intended to come back for them. There is a dollar greenback, a fifty-cent piece, a little silk flag with stars and stripes, and——!” he hesitated a moment, and then went on: “In a small, pearl box, and tied with a white ribbon, is a long curl of hair—a woman’s hair. Please let me open that window. You look faint, and it is very warm here,” he said, breaking suddenly from his talk of Nicol’s 53treasures, and raising a sash behind me, as he saw me gasp for breath.

The cool air from the river revived me, or I should have fallen, the atmosphere grew so thick and the room so black as I saw myself a young girl, under the maple tree, giving a lock of my hair to Nicol Patoff, who had seemed so eager to get it, and who had cared so little for it as to leave it with strangers when the house was sold.

“You do look spotted and queer, and it is awful hot in here,” Mary said, fanning me with her hat; then, turning to the gendarme, she continued: “A lock of hair, a greenback, a fifty-cent piece and a flag! There is a romance hidden in this desk. What is the color of the hair?”

She looked at my heavy braids, but her countenance fell when the gendarme replied: “Black as night!”

I knew he lied, but blessed him for it, feeling sure that he guessed on whose head the hair once grew, and wished to spare me from Mary’s badinage.

She was very young and irrepressible, and went on: “Funny he should have left them, unless he had to run away. Can we see them?”

“Certainly not,” he replied. “It was wrong in me to 54speak of them, perhaps, and it would be a greater wrong to show them.”

“I guess you are right,” Mary said, while I made a move toward the door.

The sight of Nicol’s picture, and the mystery attending him, had affected me strangely, making me faint and sick, and I longed to be in the fresh air outside.

“You will stay for a cup of tea? Ludovic will prepare it at once, and we have some rare old china,” the gendarme said, but I declined the tea, and hurried from the room. As we emerged from the gloomy vestibule into the summer sunshine, the gendarme said to me, in a tone too low for even Mary to hear: “You have seen Nicol Patoff’s old home. Could you ever have lived here with him?”

He had no right to ask me such a question, and I felt my face grow red and my hair prickle at the roots, as I answered, promptly: “Never with him, nor anyone else!”

Why I added the last clause I do not know. There had been no reference to my living there with anyone but Nicol, and that was an impossibility. The gendarme laughed, and said: “Yankee habits and Russian customs would not affiliate well, I am sure. It is better for you to be as you are, and Nicol as he is.”

55“Where is he, and of what is he suspected?” I asked, looking the officer square in his face, while his lids drooped lower over his eyes, and the ridge on his forehead grew deeper.

“It is too long a story, and madame would believe nothing against Nicol, if I told her,” he said.

He seemed to take my liking for Nicol for granted, and it made me angry, but my reply was to thank him for his courtesy in showing us the house, saying I knew my companions had enjoyed it, and that some of them would undoubtedly make it a subject for a paper for some of the clubs to which they belonged.

“Clubs, yes!” he rejoined, with animation. “I hear your country is full of them. And of societies called for letters of the alphabet, ‘D. A. R.’s,’ and ‘G. A. R.’s,’ and ‘Y. M. C. A.’s’ and ‘W. C. T. U.’s,’ and ‘Y. P. S. C. E.’s,’ and a host more. I got an American to give me the list, and what they all meant, and tried to commit it to memory, but gave it up. I’d like to see an article any of you might write on our house. I hope you will omit the general untidiness. It is better when mother is at home,” he said, with a bow, as he bade us good-by, saying we were welcome to call again whenever we chose. The old 56porter knew us now for friends, and would let us in at any time.

“I don’t know why we should ever care to go into that old house again, smelling of must and rats. Forty servants! And I don’t think the windows had been washed this summer, or the big salon dusted,” was Mary’s comment, as we walked rapidly toward our hotel, for it was getting near dinner time.

During the next week we scoured St. Petersburg as well as eight women without a guide could scour it, and by some means gained access to places which our whilom conductor, Henri, who still lounged at the hotel, told us were impossible to be seen without permits from the highest authorities. We had no permits, and just walked in, as a matter of course.

Everything seemed to give way to us, and we went about far more fearlessly, I think, than the czar, when he occasionally drove into town, with his armed police beside him. We had no guards—even Chance had deserted us, and we saw nothing of him or his master after the day we visited the Patoff house. We passed the place two or three times, and always stopped a moment to look at it, but there was nothing attractive in its gloomy, shut-up appearance. The master was evidently absent 57from the city, and I was not willing to admit that I missed him; but I did, and missed Chance more, feeling always a sense of security when he was with us.

But this did not prevent us from going wherever the fancy took us—sometimes on the beautiful river, Neva, the glory of the city; sometimes in droskies, which were not so terrible as the first one I had tried; but oftener on foot, feeling sure that our numbers and nationality protected us, and gaining courage and daring, until suddenly confronted with an experience we had not counted upon.

CHAPTER V. THE HIGHWAYMAN.

Of all our party, next to myself, Mary was the fondest of walking, and went with me oftenest on long excursions. We had driven up and down the Nevsky two or three times, but had never walked its entire length, as I proposed doing a few days before our intended departure from the city. It was one of those bright, sunshiny afternoons, which almost make amends for the ice and snow in which the city is wrapped a great portion of the year. There were very few in the street, either in the fashionable or common part of the Nevsky, and the air was so invigorating that we felt no fatigue, but walked on and on, past the Patoff house, which showed some signs of life.

A door and windows were open, and we saw a lackey or two dodging in and out. Probably the master had returned, and I felt a little thrill of pleasure at the thought of meeting him again. It was impossible not to like him for his great friendliness and the many times he had made it easy for us in a city hedged round with 59rules and spies and officials ready to take advantage of us.

For a long time after passing the Patoff house we went on, until at last we turned into quarters where I had never been. A glance told me that it was peopled by the poorest class; still, I kept on, noticing how hard were the faces of the women, and how squalid and dirty were the children playing by the doors of the houses. I had been anxious to talk with this class of people, and hear from their own lips a history of their lives and their much-vaunted adoration of the czar, who could do no wrong!

Here was my opportunity, and I was about to accost a tired-faced woman, and had bowed to her smilingly, when suddenly I was confronted by a shabbily dressed young man, whose cringing manner bespoke the professional beggar. Not knowing that I could understand him, he held out his hand, and then put it to his mouth, in token of hunger, a trick I had seen many times in Italy.

“What do you want?” I asked, drawing back from him, as he came so near to me that I smelled his breath of bad tobacco and vodka.

60At the sound of his own language, his face brightened, and he exclaimed: “God be praised, madame speaks Russian! She is kind, I know, and was sent to help me, and will give me a few kopecks for my sick wife and two starving children. I came from Moscow a few weeks ago to get work, but can find none, with everybody out of the city. Fifty kopecks are all I ask.”

He was still holding his hand very close to me, and once touched my arm, while I was thinking what to do, and doubting the propriety of giving the man the fifty kopecks asked for. It was not a large sum—about twenty-five cents—for a sick wife and two starving children. In my weakness—for I am weak where poverty is concerned—I might have yielded if Mary had not pulled my sleeve, and whispered, frantically: “Come away, Miss Lucy! The man is an impostor! I believe we are among thieves!”

He could not have understood her words, but he divined their import, and instantly his manner changed, from a hungry beggar to that of a resolute bandit, sure of his prey. Snatching with one hand at the bag at my side, in which I was supposed to carry money, with the other he clutched at the ring on my ungloved hand, trying to wrench it from my finger. It was not a large 61stone, but a fine one, and its brilliancy in the sunlight had attracted his notice.

I held to my bag with one hand, but with the other I was powerless, for he held it as in a vise. I felt there was no use appealing to the women near us for help. They were looking on stolidly, as if a theft in open day was nothing new to them. One, however—the tired-faced woman to whom I had bowed—seemed agitated, and suggested that I call the police.

But there were none in sight. The street seemed deserted. Even the butki, or box, on the far corner of the street, or square, where three men are always supposed to be stationed, to keep order, seemed also deserted, and I was left to fight my antagonist alone, with the probable result of being defeated. Suddenly, like an inspiration, Chance came into my mind. If he were there, I was safe. I did not know that he was home, but in my desperation I called, with all my might: “Chance, Chance, I want you!”

Almost before his name had left my lips, I heard the thud of his feet, like the hoofbeats of a horse, and knew that he was coming, but not the Chance I had ever seen before—mild-eyed and gentle as a baby. Every part of his body was bristling with rage, making him twice as 62big as usual. His eyes were red as balls of fire, and his teeth showed white between his open jaws. If I had not known him, I should have thought him mad, and, as it was, I felt a little shiver of fear as he came rushing on, with a low, angry growl, and his head low down.

The bandit’s back was to him, and he did not know the danger threatening him until Chance came round in front and two big feet struck him in the stomach, stretching him upon the ground, with Chance standing over him and looking at me for instructions as to what he should do next. I had heard some Russian oaths, but never any quite so fierce as those which came from the lips of the prostrate young man, who had wrenched my bag from my side, and kept it, with a tight grip.

“Chance,” I said, pointing to the bag, “that is mine. Get it for me!”

He understood, and in a moment the bag was in my hand, and on that of the bandit was an ugly wound, where Chance’s teeth had been. The dog still kept his place over the fallen man, growling angrily whenever his foe attempted to rise.

“Please, lady, call him off!” the man pleaded, his face white and his teeth chattering with terror.

63I was nearly as white as he was, and trembling in every limb, as I stood looking at him.

“Oh, please let me go before he nabs me!” he continued, as, lifting up his head, he looked down the long street, where a policeman was just appearing in response to a tardy summons from the butki. “I’ve been in a dungeon, I’ve had the knout, and they did not make me any better. Let me go,” he said. “I did wrong, and am sorry!”

The knout and dungeon had an ugly sound. All my womanly pity awoke for the wretch, who was little more than a boy.

“I’ll give you another chance to do better,” I said, bidding the dog come to me, which he did rather unwillingly, growling savagely as the man sprang up, and, picking up his hat, exclaimed: “Thanks, lady! I’ll not forget it!” and then disappeared into some den or alley.

The women began to gather around me by this time, all talking together, and evidently so pleased at the escape of the thief that I was almost as much afraid of them as of him. The tired-faced woman, however, who had suggested the police, was different, and, when she asked me to sit down, I assented, for I was very tired, and went toward her door.

64“Wait a moment,” she said, as she saw me about to sit upon the doorstep, which was rather dusty, but which I preferred to a seat inside, because it was in the open air.

Bringing a broom, she swept the step clean, and, taking off her apron, folded it and laid it down for a cushion for Mary and me, while she took a seat inside the door. Mary was nearly in a state of collapse with fright, and did not refuse a drink of the vodka a woman offered her in a broken cup. The strong liquor, which nearly strangled her, did her good, for she sat up in a moment and began to pull her dress away from contact with those near her.

Chance had stretched himself at my feet, but his head was up and alert, as if scenting mischief. Evidently he did not like the neighborhood, for he looked at me occasionally, as if asking why I was here, and why I did not leave. Several children gathered round him, timidly at first; then, as they gained courage, putting their little, dirty hands on his shaggy side, and calling him Chance, and a good dog, to which attention he responded rather indifferently, with a whack or two of his bushy tail.

“Do they all know him?” I asked, in some surprise, and forgetting that they had heard me call his name.

65“Oh, yes,” the woman answered. “We all know Michel Seguin’s dog—a better detective, they say, than his master, if he chooses to use him, which he not often does.”

The policeman now came up, and began to question the crowd as to the recent disturbance. At sight of him, the children drew back and huddled closely together, but the women stood their ground, and began to tell the story, but shielded the thief as much as possible. A man had snatched at madame’s purse, and she had set the dog on him, was the amount of information, until a child called out, in a little piping voice, as she pointed toward me:

“Ask her. She talks our way.”

Scanning me very closely, as if I had been some rare curiosity, the man said: “You are the American madame who speaks our language so well?”

I did not like his face or his manner. He was brusque and rough, and different from any gendarme with whom I had come in contact, but I replied that I was from America, and could speak his language.

“Tell me, then,” he said, “the right of this row. I can make nothing from the jargon of these cattle, who evidently wish to shield their friend.”

66I told him the story briefly, and described the man as well as I could.

“Carl Zimosky, by Heaven!” he exclaimed, bringing his fist down upon his side, and addressing himself to the women, one of whom nodded.

Then, turning to me, with an angry frown, he continued: “And you let him escape! You let Carl Zimosky go, when you might have kept him so easily! Carl Zimosky is one of the worst felons we have, and is slippery as an eel—a thief and a pickpocket. A sick wife and two starving children! He has no wife, nor children. He is not twenty-one. We have had him up twice.”

“Yes, he told me he had been in a dungeon and under the knout, and they made him worse,” I said, looking at him very calmly and coolly.

“And perhaps that is the reason you let him go. You thought him a nihilist, and I’ve been told you sympathize with them. Madame,” he continued, his voice growing louder and his manner so offensive that Chance got up, looked at him and growled, shook his sides, looked at me, and lay down again, nearer to me, with his head stretched forward, as if listening, while the gendarme went on: “Madame, these things may do in the United States, but 67not here in Russia! You may get into trouble, if you are a woman and an American!”

He fairly swelled with importance as he delivered this threatening speech, which did not move me, except to make me angry. I was not afraid. I knew that, at a word from me, Chance would have him by the throat, and of what might come after that I did not think or care.

“Sir!” I began, rising to my feet, in order to look over the heads of the women, who at the man’s angry words had gathered in front of me, like a fence, to keep me from harm. “Sir! do you think I am going to stay all the afternoon keeping guard over Carl Simpsy, or Simpson, or whatever his name is, waiting for you, or some other laggard, to come? Where were you, that you were not attending to your business? I have seen policemen in all parts of the city except here, where, it seems, they are needed——”

“And where you ought never to have come,” he interrupted, in a much lower tone than he had at first assumed. “It is no place for women, alone, and I don’t believe you’d got away with any money or jewelry you may have about you now, if it were not for that dog. Where, in Heaven’s name, did he come from? I thought 68Seguin was out of town. This Zimosky is suspected of robbing his house last night, and we are looking for him.”

“Robbed Michel Seguin’s house!” I exclaimed, a half wish throbbing through my brain that I had detained the man.

The gendarme must have guessed my thought, for he said, with a sneering smile: “Madame feels differently now that Seguin is concerned. I have heard you were very friendly with him.”

I was too angry to answer, and I felt that my face was as red as my hair. The women began at once to ask questions concerning the robbery, but the gendarme did not deign to answer them. They were cattle, as he had designated them, and, as just then there came a whistle which he understood, with a scowl at the women and children and a look I did not like at myself, he walked away in pursuit of some poor wretch—Carl, perhaps, I thought, as I sat down again upon the doorstep, faint and tired from my recent encounter.

Only the woman on whose doorstep and on whose apron I was sitting was willing to talk. She seemed superior to her neighbors, with a look upon her face as if 69nothing mattered to her now. In reply to my questions, she said that Paul Strigoff, the gendarme who had just left us, was one of the hardest and cruelest of the lot, and he was more a German than a Russian. Carl had been in prison, and nearly killed with the knout, but he had his good parts, and would share his last crust or kopecks with a friend.

“He is”—and she hesitated a moment; then began, in tolerably fair English; and, when I looked at her in surprise, she explained that she had once lived in England for a year, and learned the language. “I was not always what I am now,” she said. “It is a great fall from the Court Quay to this place, but I have made the descent, and was so bruised and stunned that life holds nothing for me now—nothing—and what goes on around me rather amuses me. I have been a suspect—arrested as such, and put in prison. Oh, the horror and shame of it, and I as innocent as you! My husband is in Siberia—sent there rightfully, I suppose, according to the laws of this land. I have no children, thank God, but”—and red spots began to come out on her thin face—“it is not known to many here—but Carl is my nephew. A good boy once as ever the sun shone on. But they arrested him for something he never heard of, and nearly killed 70him with the knout to make him confess what he knew nothing of. When satisfied that they could get nothing from him, they let him go, and he crept to me in the night, with his poor back all gashed and bleeding, and every particle of manhood crushed out of him. There is nothing like the knout administered wrongfully to take the pride from a man and make him a fiend. Carl is pretty bad now, and does not care. I am sorry he attacked you, and wonder that he did. He must have had too much vodka. You should not have come here, and the sooner you go, the better. Your friend is greatly upset.”

She looked at Mary, who was very white and very busy trying to keep herself from the children who were pressing round her, and who had been joined by other children from some quarter. Among them I recognized my hat, which I had discarded on the first day of my arrival. The same girl I had then seen with it on was wearing it, and had twisted a piece of faded blue tarleton around it in place of the ribbon and flower, which, I suppose, some other child was wearing. At sight of it, I laughed. The world seemed so small, with many wires converging to the same point, and just now to this neighborhood, where I knew I ought not to be. But I must 71ask the woman a question before I left, and, turning to her, I said: “Do you know Michel Seguin?”

“Only as a terror to the nihilists and thieves. I’ve never spoken to him,” she said. “I hear that, although he is quick to catch ’em, he is kind after they are caught. Very different from Paul Strigoff, who has come up from the scum of Moscow, and feels his importance as a gendarme, while Michel Seguin is a gentleman, and comes of a good family.”

“Do you know where he lives?” I asked her next, and she replied: “Yes; on the Nevsky. He has money, and his mother is a lady.”

“And did you ever know or hear of the Patoff family, who first owned the house? There was a Nicol Patoff, a young man. Did you ever hear of him?”

“Patoff?” she replied. “No, I don’t know them. They must have left before I came to St. Petersburg. The Seguins lived there then.”

“Thanks!” I said; “and now I really must go. Come, Mary.”

I stooped to help her up, and, before I got her to her feet and away from the woman, who was again offering her vodka, I was conscious that some new impulse had been given to the crowd, which had pressed disagreeably 72near to me as I bent over Mary. The children began to scatter, and in the distance I saw my hat, worn hindside before, and bobbing up and down on the frowsy head of the peasant girl. The women, too, began to move off toward their own homes, while Chance started up, and, with a joyous bark, ran swiftly up the street, where a tall gendarme was coming toward us with rapid strides and swinging a little cane, which I had heard could, on occasion, make itself felt.

“Michel Seguin!” I almost screamed, as I clutched Mary’s arm and drew her along with me. “Oh, I am so glad,” I said, stretching out my disengaged hand to Michel, who took it, while with his other hand he relieved me of Mary, who, at sight of him, began to recover her strength and courage.

And so, without a word of inquiry or explanation, we walked away from that quarter to the Nevsky, which had never seemed so bright and pleasant as it did when we at last sat down upon a bench, with Michel between us, still holding our hands, as if he had us in custody.

“Now, tell me,” he said, “how came you in that quarter, of all others? It is no place to walk. What took you there?”

“My miserable curiosity,” I said, with a sob in my 73voice. “I wanted to explore new places, and see all sorts and conditions of people.”

“I think you probably saw them,” he answered. “I reached home about noon. I saw you go by, but was too busy to speak to you. Knowing your fondness for long walks, I concluded you were taking one, but as time passed, and you did not return, I sent Chance to find you. But what happened to upset you so?”

It was Mary who began to tell the story. I could not. The thought of it made me faint again, and, without knowing it, I leaned rather heavily against Michel, while, in a voice half choked with nervous tears, Mary related our experience with the thief, and the part Chance had in it.

The dog seemed to know what she was saying, for he stamped his feet and shook his head, turned a somersault or two, and finally came and, putting his nose in his master’s lap, looked earnestly at him for commendation. “Good Chance,” was all the return he could get, for both the gendarme’s hands were in use, one holding me, the other holding Mary, while he listened with rapt attention, and, when she mentioned the name of the thief, he started and let go my hand.

“Carl Zimosky!” he repeated. “He is the most expert 74thief we have. I never knew him openly attack one in daylight before. Such things are not common. There are too many police around, besides the three in the butkis.”

“Great good they did us!” I exclaimed. “I don’t believe they were on guard, or else they were asleep, and your fine policeman, Paul Strigoff, took his time to get to us, and, when he came, he was exceedingly insolent because I had let the thief go.”

“Paul Strigoff!” and Michel laughed; “and so you fell in with him, too! You did have an adventure! Paul and Carl! I wish myself you could have kept the latter till we found whether he had my watch.”

“Your watch!” I repeated, remembering, suddenly, what I had heard of his house being robbed. “Was your house really entered? Strigoff said so.”

“Yes,” he answered. “When I reached home, I found the servants in a great commotion. My house had been entered by some one, a quantity of silver taken, and a gold watch, which I prized very highly, because—because——” he hesitated, then went on: “It is an American watch, made in Waltham, and, you know, they are valuable. It was Nicol’s. He brought it home with him, 75and it has ‘Ridgefield’ on it, and the date when he bought it.”

“How came you by it?” I asked, rather sharply, and he replied: “Just as I came by the house and the other articles. All fair, as I once told you. The Patoffs were not cheated.”

Here was a new complication, with Nicol in it. I remembered the watch perfectly. It was bought at a jeweler’s in Ridgefield, who kept only the best wares. Nicol had seemed rather proud of it and consulted it frequently if the day was hot, the lessons hard and his pupils stupid and anxious to be free.

“And you suspect Carl Zimosky?” I asked, in an unsteady voice.

“Yes, we always suspect him. He is what you Americans call a bad egg—into one scrape as soon as he is out of another.”

“And I let him go!” I said. “He begged so hard and looked so scared; but I’ll try and get the watch for you if he has it.”

“You!” and he laughed derisively. “Will you turn detective, and go into the dives after him? He eludes us every time.”

“No,” I answered, thinking of the tired-faced woman, 76his aunt, whom they called Ursula. I should work through her, but I did not say so, as I did not wish to bring her into the trouble if I could help it.

“I do not know for sure that he has the watch, but I am sure you cannot get it if he has,” the gendarme said.

“Let me try, and don’t go after him until I have given him up,” I said. “He has been in prison once and under the knout, and his back is all cut and scarred. It is horrible, and I hate the whole system, and am glad we are going away in a few days.”

“Going away so soon?” the gendarme asked, and in his voice there was genuine regret such as we feel when parting from a friend.

“Yes,” I answered, not quite in the tone I had at first assumed.

I could not understand the influence this man had over me, or the sense of restfulness I felt as I walked beside him on the Nevsky, till we reached his house, which, at his invitation, we entered, hearing from the porter and a head servant an account of the robbery, which was so adroitly done as to leave in their minds no doubt that the thief was Carl Zimosky.

“But we’ll get him, we’ll get him,” the porter said, with 77a shake of his gray head, “and the knout will soon make him give up the plunder, if he has it.”

I shuddered, but made no remark. I meant to get the watch, if Carl had it, though how I scarcely knew. It was growing late, and I was too tired to walk the remaining distance to the hotel. I would take a drosky, I said, and, with Mary, was soon being hurled along the street in an old vehicle and at a pace which threatened the dislocation of our limbs, if indeed we were not thrown into the street.

If anyone at the hotel had heard of the robbery at Michel Seguin’s house, nothing was said of it, and by mutual consent Mary and I kept our own counsel with regard to our adventure. We had had a long walk and been in a queer part of the city, we said, when questioned, and that was all. I was more tired and excited than I had ever been in my life, and I made my fatigue an excuse for retiring early to my room, where I lay awake far into the night, devising means for getting Michel’s watch, if possible, from the hands of Carl Zimosky, if he had it, or through him from the one who did have it.

CHAPTER VI. THE WATCH.

I changed my mind with regard to leaving St. Petersburg in three days, and decided to stay a week longer. For this change I made no explanation except to Mary, whom I took into my confidence, telling her of my intended visit to Ursula and asking her to go with me. At first she shrank from the idea in alarm, but finally consented, and on the afternoon of the second day after our adventure, we started again for what Mary called the thieves’ quarters. To save time we took a drosky nearly to the end of the Nevsky, and walked the rest of the way. It was a warm afternoon and the street was swarming with children who, at sight of us, set up a clamor. “She’s come again—the madame who talks as we do,” and they began to gather around us; but I waved them off so imperatively that they did not even touch us with their hands as I went forward to where Ursula was again sitting in her door mending some garments which I knew intuitively belonged to her scapegrace nephew. She looked surprised when she saw us, 79but arose at once and asked us to come in instead of sitting upon the steps, as we had done before. Her room was neat and clean and homelike, although poorly furnished and showing signs of poverty.

“Please keep them out,” I said, motioning to the children, some of whom followed us in. “My business with you is private.”

An expression I did not quite like came upon her face as she sent the children away, and then, speaking in English, said: “What is it? Why have you come again?”

I told her very briefly that everything pointed to Carl as the thief who had entered Michel Seguin’s house, and why I was interested to get the watch, if possible. “Do you think Carl has it?” I asked.

Her needle came unthreaded just then, and after biting the end of her thread several times and making several jabs at the eye of her needle, she took up the poor old coat, patched in many places, and replied: “I don’t think—I never know what he has, nor what he does except as I hear it. I’ll not deny that the police have been here after him, but they didn’t get him. He’s cute,” and she smiled in a proud kind of way at the boy’s cuteness in eluding the vigilance of the gendarmes.

80“Do you see him often?” I asked, and she replied: “Yes, and no; if he is hard pressed he stays where they can’t find him. Late at night he comes in to see me.”

“Can you communicate with him when you wish to?” I asked next, and she replied: “Yes, we have ways and means—a kind of underground railroad such as your people used to have when you had a slavery not half as crushing as ours.”

“You are a nihilist,” I said, and instantly her face flamed up, then grew pale, as she replied: “Of course I am. Half of us are nihilists at heart. Not that we want to kill the czar. That’s murder. We want a freer government, like yours, where we dare call our souls our own and are not watched at every turn.”

We were getting away from the object of my visit, and I came back to it by saying: “Will you see Carl and ask him to bring you the watch? I don’t care for the silver; it is the watch I want. I let him go when I might have kept him till the gendarme came. I think there is enough good in him to do me this favor.”

“He may do it for you. He was very grateful. Paul Strigoff is a devil,” she said; then she added, suddenly: “You and Michel Seguin are great friends.”

81

“Marry him! Marry a Russian! Never!”

83I did not know whether we were or not, but it was safe to answer in the affirmative and that he had been very kind to us all since we first met him.

“He is of a good family and ought to be something better than a hunter of criminals. People wonder he took it up. Would you marry him?” was her next question.

“Marry him! Marry a Russian! Never!” I exclaimed, so loud that she started in her chair. Her spectacles fell off and her needle came unthreaded again.

“They are not so bad if you get the right one,” she said, adjusting her glasses and making more jabs at the eye of her needle.

I threaded it for her, and as there was nothing to gain by stopping longer, I took my leave, after bidding her let me know at once if she had good news for me.

“To-morrow,” was her reply, and I left her patching the old coat which made me faint to look at, it spoke so plainly of poverty and the scenes it must have been in, for I believed it was the one Carl had worn when I met him, and that the rent which Ursula was mending was made by Chance’s big paws.

Quite a retinue of children attended us for a ways, and among them my old hat was conspicuous again, worn this time right side before, with a piece of an old 84blue veil twisted round it and round the girl’s face. That night seemed interminable as I waited for the to-morrow and what it might bring from Ursula. It brought a note addressed in a fair hand, and containing only the words: “Come this afternoon at two o’clock, and alone.”

I did not quite like the word alone, but did not hesitate a moment. But how should I manage it? What excuse should I make to my friends who were already looking upon me as something of a crank? At last I decided to make no excuse except that I was going out on business and alone, with the exception of Chance, who was already waiting outside the hotel, as he had waited every morning since my adventure with Carl. Mary suspected where I was going, but said nothing, and at a little before two I was driving along the Nevsky till I reached a point where I alighted, telling the driver I would walk the rest of the way. Chance was in high spirits, sometimes running far ahead of me and then bounding back to my side. The moment I turned into the street, or square, where Ursula lived his whole attitude changed. His fur seemed rough and his head was lowered to the ground as he started on a racing gallop as if in pursuit of something. He was usually 85obedient to my call, and I succeeded in getting him back and kept my hand upon his neck until I reached Ursula’s house. There were not as many children in sight as usual. They had gone on a picnic and the street was very quiet. Ursula was watching for me, but her countenance fell when she saw Chance pulling to get free.

“I thought you would come alone,” she said. “I am afraid of that dog.”

“He is harmless if there is nothing to be harmed,” I replied, taking the chair she offered me and still holding Chance, who tugged to get away from me, and finally did so, beginning to run in circles around the room and to scratch at a door which, I think, opened into a bedchamber and in which I heard a rustling sound as of some one moving. “Carl is in there,” I said to Ursula, who replied, after listening a moment, while Chance continued banging at the door with his huge paws: “He was there. He is not now, thank God! He has a way of leaving the place unknown to anyone but ourselves. And he has taken it. He saw the dog coming with you and was afraid like myself. I sent for him last night and told him what you wanted. He had the watch and promised to bring it this afternoon and 86give it to you himself. He wanted to thank you personally for letting him go that day and to tell you he was not all bad and was going to do better. He brought the watch, but dare not face the dog.”

She arose and went into the bedroom, followed by Chance, who acted as if he would tear up the floor and ceiling, until I quieted him by the first blow I had ever given him, and which wrung from him a look of intense surprise as he crouched at my feet with his nose on the floor as if scenting something.

“Do you recognize it?” Ursula asked, putting the watch in my hands. “It has a name and date on the lid.”

I knew it was Nicol’s without the name, and the touch of it was like the touch of a vanished hand not dead in reality to my knowledge, but dead to me except so far as memory was concerned, and the sight of it brought Nicol as vividly to mind as when I was the pupil and he the teacher—young, handsome and strong in all that makes a man strong mentally and physically, and I could hear his voice calling me Lucy, as he did once or twice when we were alone, and his soft, brown eyes looked at me as no other eyes since had ever looked. Where was he now, and what the mystery surrounding him? And——

87

“I thought you would come alone. I am afraid of that dog.”

89There came over me a flash of heat which made my blood boil, as I thought: “Could Chance find him from this clew?” Then as quickly I answered: “No. I will get the truth from Michel Seguin when I give him back his property.”

As I turned to go I offered Ursula money for Carl. But with a proud gesture she refused it. “He thought you might do it and said he should not take it. He was not as mean as that,” she said, giving me a box in which to put the watch which was ticking as loudly and evenly as it had done years ago in the schoolhouse in Ridgefield. I wanted to give the woman something to show my gratitude to her, and offered her the stick pin which held my scarf. But she declined it; then, with a wistful look at the knot of red, white and blue ribbon which I always wore, she asked if I had another like it. I had, and at once gave her the knot, which she took with thanks.

“It is the badge of a free country,” she said, “where I once thought to go. It is too late now for me, but if Carl could get there it might make a good man of him. Here he can do nothing but hide—hide—till he is caught again, and then Siberia, or a dungeon!”

I was sorry for the woman, whose dim old eyes were 90full of tears as she bade me good-by, saying: “You will not betray my boy by telling where he was when you got the watch?”

“Never!” I answered, and kissed the tired, white face which I might never see again.

I did not know what Mrs. Grundy would say when she saw a lone woman stop at Michel Seguin’s house, nor did I care. I was at a point where Mrs. Grundy’s opinion did not matter, and I bade the driver of the drosky leave me at Monsieur Seguin’s door, after ascertaining that he was at home. His face was one of intense surprise when he saw me, and mingling with the surprise was a look of pleasure as he came forward to meet me.

“What is it? What has happened?” he asked, for I was shaking with excitement.

“Let me go to your room—Nicol’s room, and I will tell you,” I said.

He led the way to his den, and opening the box, I put the watch upon the table without a word.

“What!” he exclaimed, springing forward and taking it up. “My watch! Where did you find it?”

“I didn’t find it,” I said. “I got it through Carl. No matter how, nor when. He brought it to me, but the silver I did not get.”

91“I don’t care for the silver,” he said, a little impatiently. “It was the watch I prized, because——”

He stopped abruptly and seemed to be thinking, while I was nerving myself for what I meant to do.

“You would make a splendid detective,” he said at last. “How can I thank you?”

Here was my chance. “You can thank me first,” I replied, “by letting that boy alone for a while, and if he is arrested again, don’t be harsh or cruel with him. There is good there which the knout will never improve.”

“Promised!” he said. “I’ll look after the lad myself, for your sake.”

The tone of his voice said what his half-shut eyes could not express, and I felt the blood tingling in my veins as I went on hurriedly:

“You can also tell me the mystery surrounding Nicol and why he is in hiding where even you cannot find him. You are a man and I am a woman—no longer young, and so I do not mind telling you that I liked Nicol Patoff very much, and I should be so glad to see him, and—and——”

Here I began to choke; but I swallowed hard, put 92aside all shame, and went on: “You have a lock of hair which he left when he went away. You said it was black; I know better; it is red, bright red—the color mine was when a young girl. It is darker now. He asked me for it, and I gave it to him. I want it back. It is mine, not yours. Will you give it to me?”

His eyes were wider open now than I had ever seen them, and startled me with an expression I could not define, but which made me wish I was not there talking to him.

“As Nicol’s property I must keep it with the watch until such time as he can claim them openly,” he said at last. “I know he thought more of the hair than of the watch. I cannot give it up.”

His manner was decided, and I felt my temper rising, but forced it down; for there was one more favor I would ask, and then I would say good-by to him forever.

“You have refused to give me the hair, but you have promised to be kind to Carl for my sake. Will you be equally lenient toward Nicol, should he be arrested and under your authority? Do you think you could do anything to help him? They say you are all powerful with your friends. Will you try to have Nicol’s punishment a little lighter? I don’t know what he has done, but 93don’t let them give him the knout, nor the dungeon, nor Siberia, nor anything.”

I was choking now and standing up, with my hands clinched so tightly that my nails hurt my flesh, while he, too, stood with his eyes closed, his chin quivering, and his teeth pressed tightly over his under lip. When he spoke his voice was strained and unnatural, as he said: “Pardon me for what I am going to say. Do you love Nicol Patoff? Would you marry him if he stood high in St. Petersburg?”

He had asked me a similar question once before, and, as then, I now answered quickly: “No, I could not marry a Russian. I hate your government machinery. I should be a nihilist in a month, and my house would be a rendezvous for them.”

“Yes,” he replied, “but you have not answered my most important question: ‘Do you love Nicol Patoff?’ I have no right to ask you, but do you?”

He seemed terribly in earnest, and I recoiled a step from him as I answered: “No! I esteemed him as a friend, nothing more; and since I have known he was in danger I have felt a great interest in him; but love him—marry him—I couldn’t. I have answered you, and now tell me, can you shield him if he is found?”

94“I think I can,” was his reply.

“And will you?”

“I will.”

“And will you tell him that I have not forgotten him?”

“I will,” were the replies and answers which followed rapidly as we walked side by side to the street, where I gave him my hand and said: “We shall certainly leave in two or three days, and I may not see you again. I must thank you for all the kindness you have shown us, helping us over rough places and in many ways, but most I thank you for Chance, who has been invaluable at times.”

He was still holding my hand and looking at me as if there was something he wished to say and was struggling to keep back. Whatever it was he did not say it, but, dropping my hand quickly, hailed a drosky, into which he put me, and, with a simple “Good-by,” turned back to his house. I made no explanation to anyone as to where I had been. I was too tired; my head ached, and I did not wish for any dinner, I said, and went to bed early, deciding to leave St. Petersburg as soon as possible. With a woman’s instinct I felt tolerably sure of the nature of M. Seguin’s feeling for me, but could not analyze my feelings for him. He 95both fascinated and repelled me. I liked him and feared him, for something in his personality always influenced me more than I cared to be influenced, and I wished to get away from it.

“We will have just one more day of looking around and then let’s go,” I said, at breakfast, to my friends, who acquiesced readily, for they longed for new scenes.

St. Petersburg was monotonous and vexatious. They had shown their passports and sworn to their nationality and ages and occupations until they were tired of it, and were quite ready to leave.

CHAPTER VII. ON THE QUAY.

That day we kept together until late in the afternoon, when Mary and I went for a short walk on the Court Quay. I had seen a few beggars, and had nearly always given them something, until I believe I was pretty well known to them as one who could easily be imposed upon, and now as I saw one coming toward me I began to harden my heart, and involuntarily put my hand upon the bag Carl had wrenched from me.

But something in the man’s face and attitude struck me as different from the ordinary beggar; and into the outstretched palm I put a few kopecks, and was asking where he lived and his name, when a hand was laid roughly on his shoulder and a harsh voice said: “I can tell you, madame; it is——”

I did not catch the name. I only knew I was standing face to face with Paul Strigoff, the gendarme, whom I had met after my encounter with Carl Zimosky.

There was a taunting sneer on his face as he said to me:

97“So madame is playing the charitable? But it is not necessary. She is mistaken in her man. He is no beggar. We have been looking for him and have found him at last. His disguise is pretty good, but it did not deceive me.”

He spoke with the utmost pomposity and self-conceit; and I wanted to knock him down, while I pitied the poor wretch who had fallen into his clutches and in whose appearance a great change was taking place. His face grew pale, but took on a very different expression from the one it had worn when he asked me for alms. Then it had been the face of a hungry peasant, with little intelligence in it. Now it was that of a man resolute and defiant, but refined and educated. He had evidently been playing a hazardous game and had lost. His disguise was detected. He was a prisoner, with no way of escape, unless——

There was a quick glance toward the Neva, as if help lay in that swift stream, if he could only reach it. But the gendarme’s grip was firm, and the man seemed half his size as he cowered in his rags.

Extending his hand to me with the kopecks I had given him, he said, in fair English:

“Thank you, lady, but take them back; I shall not 98need them. We have little use for money where I am going. Please write to No. — Nevsky, and tell her I have been arrested, and tell Sophie and Ivan——”

He did not finish the sentence, for the gendarme shook him roughly, commanding him to stop, or speak Russian. As he could not understand a word of English, he evidently suspected we might be hatching some plot, and sternly demanded to know what we were saying. I told him all except that I was to write to No. — Nevsky. It was well to withhold this, I thought, and there was a gleam of intense satisfaction in the man’s eyes, which thanked me more than words could have done.

“God bless you!” he said, in much the same tone of old Ursula when she bade me good-by, and then he was started for the gloomy fortress.

In my excitement I stepped in front of him and, stopping him for an instant, grasped his hand and said:

“Good-by and God pity you! I shall pray for you every day.”

It was a bold thing to do in the teeth of Paul Strigoff, who scowled at me threateningly and asked again what I had been saying, and if I knew I was sympathizing with one of the most notorious nihilists alive.

99“He is more dangerous than your thief, Carl Zimosky,” he added.

The prisoner made no sign that he heard or cared, until Carl was mentioned; then he looked up quickly, with a flash of resentment, it seemed to me, at being classed with a thief. It was then that I noticed more particularly his finely-cut features and dark, expressive eyes, which, in spite of his courage, had in them such a look of terror and despair as I shall never forget.

I made no reply to the gendarme and walked away, not knowing but I might be arrested as a suspect and sympathizer with anarchists.

Arrived at our hotel I wrote my promised letter, with no clew to guide me except the number, “Ivan,” “Sophie” and “her.” The “her” was probably his wife, and I addressed her as madame and told her the particulars of the arrest and that the man had evidently wished to send some word to “Ivan” and “Sophie.” I would not trust my note to the mail, but sent it by a private messenger from the hotel to the number on the Nevsky, which I found was in a more fashionable quarter than M. Seguin’s house.

The excitement of the last few days, added to the heat, which was intense, proved too much for me, and instead 100of leaving St. Petersburg the next day, I was in bed with what would have proved a case of nervous prostration if I had not fought it with all my will power. At first I rebelled against the detention, for I was anxious to leave St. Petersburg behind me; but as the days went by I was glad of the illness which brought me so many unknown friends. These were not tourists—they were too busy with sight-seeing to do more than ask how I was and pass on—but the citizens, people whom I did not know, who surprised me by their frequent inquiries and the profusion of flowers they sent, until my room was like a great garden, and the doctor ordered some of them to be taken out, as the perfume was so strong. No name ever came with the flowers but once, and that touched me closely.

Around a bunch of pinks a paper was twisted, and on it was written:

“Carl is doing better. He has sent the silver back, and seen the gendarme.

I cried when Mary read me the note, which I still have, together with a few of the faded pinks pressed between the leaves of my Bible. I cried again when another bouquet came, this time beautiful hothouse roses, tied with a broad white ribbon, to which was attached a card with the words: “To our friend, A. N.”

101

“‘God Bless You!’ he said ... and then he was started for the gloomy fortress.”

103“A. N.,” I repeated. “Who is ‘A. N.’? I know no one with those initials.”

“I have it!” Mary exclaimed, after a moment. “‘A. N.,’ a nihilist! That is what it is, and all these flowers are from the same source—nihilists, I mean. They have heard a lot about you and wish to show their gratitude.”

“But I am not a nihilist!” I said.

“No,” Mary replied, “but you have got your name mixed up with them, defying Paul Strigoff to his face, and letting Carl somebody go, and calling on an old lady who was once in prison, and a lot more we have heard, until I believe the hotel people begin to think they are harboring a suspect and will be glad when we are gone.”

“Not more than I shall be!” I exclaimed, while Mary went on:

“I have not told you that Chance comes every morning and looks at me so inquiringly that I give him a card, with the words ‘About the same,’ ‘Improving,’ or ‘Better’ on it, and he goes off on the run, with the card held in his mouth. The first time I gave it to him a 104miserable censor happened to be outside and demanded to see it. I motioned him to get it if he could. He tried, but the dog held on till the card was torn in shreds, and I am not sure that the censor’s hand was not scratched a little. I wrote another at the desk and held it up to the censor, who of course could not read it; but he pretended he could, and nodded very patronizingly, while Chance growled at him and then set off on a gallop for home. M. Seguin has not been here that I know of, but he has sent you flowers every day—expensive ones, too, the best he could find—and, oh! I came near forgetting, a frowsy-headed girl, wearing your old hat, came bringing a few violets she must have gathered in the country, and an old drosky driver, looking like a barrel, inquired for ‘little madame’ at the office, saying he was the first to drive you in the city. He seemed to think it an honor. I did not tell you all this at the time, as you were too weak to hear it.”

I turned my face to the wall and cried, until Mary became alarmed and sent for the doctor. I did not know what I was crying for, but as a thunder shower clears the sultry atmosphere, tears did me good, and I was better the next day and the next, and was soon able to start on the long overland journey to the frontier. Many 105kind wishes were expressed by the people in the hotel, and I was the recipient of so many flowers that I was obliged to leave some of them behind. The old barrel-shaped man who boasted of having given me my first drive in the city stood outside, smartened up with a new wadded garment tied around the waist with a piece of red cord like that with which we sometimes hang pictures.

“Would little madame do him the honor to let him drive her to the train? He would promise to go slowly, and not break her bones!”

I could not refuse, and so it came about that in the same old rattletrap in which I first rode through the streets of St. Petersburg, I was driven to the station, the old man stopping occasionally to ask if the little madame was comfortable and was he driving too fast.

“No, no,” I cried, “go on; we may be late.”

“All right!” and he shook the strips of leather which could not have restrained his horse a moment had he chosen to use his strength.

Near the station there was quite a motley crowd of people, some well dressed, some otherwise. My hat was bobbing up and down in the midst as if the wearer were trying to get a sight of me, and I caught a glimpse of 106Ursula and, near her, Carl, who boldly waved his hat. A moment after, my old hat went up in the air, showing two streamers of some soiled stuff at the back.

What did it mean? Had they come to see me off, and were these the people who had sent me so many flowers? The possibility brought a big lump into my throat. Then I wondered if M. Seguin would be there to say good-by, not caring to confess how disappointed I should be if he were not.

He was there with Chance, who put his big paws on my shoulders, with a low kind of woof, as if he knew I was going and was sorry. In my weak state tears came easily, and they fell like rain as I put my arms around the noble brute’s neck and bade him good-by. M. Seguin was there ostensibly on official business, but he attended to our tickets and passports and made it very easy for us to leave.

“Do you know you are having a unique send off?” he said. And when I asked what he meant, he replied:

“Do you notice that group of people in the streets? They are your friends. I saw the tangle-haired girl to whom you gave your hat among them, with Ursula and Carl Zimosky. He brought back the silver himself, knowing the risk he ran. He said he was trying to do 107better for your sake, because you kept him from Paul Strigoff. I believe every mother’s son and daughter there in the street is a nihilist at heart, and they think you are one with them and are showing their gratitude.”

I could not answer for that lump in my throat, but at the very last I put a limp, clammy hand into his broad, warm one and tried to thank him again for all his kindness to us.

“Don’t, please,” he said, very low. “For anything I have done I have been more than repaid in knowing you—the fearless American woman who dares say what she thinks. I shall not forget you, and some time you will come again.”

I shook my head and hurried toward my companions, who were motioning me to make haste. There was not much need of haste, I thought, as the trains seldom start on time, but this one did, and in a few minutes we were on our long journey of five hundred and sixty miles to the frontier. It was monotonous and wearisome, with nothing to interest us or to look at except the brown plains and forests of pines and silver birches, and at rare intervals a village of twenty mud cottages or more, with a few peasants working in the fields. It was very tiresome, and when at last it ended and we crossed the 108frontier into Germany eight women simultaneously said: “Thank God!” And yet in the heart of one of the eight there was a lingering regret for all she was leaving; and she felt, too, a throb of sympathy and gratitude for the strangers in the street who had waved her a farewell and sent after her, she was sure, a fervent “God bless you!”

CHAPTER VIII. SOPHIE SCHOLASKIE.

Three years later I was again in Europe, traveling with my nephew and niece, Katy and Jack, the motherless children of my only sister. We had seen a great deal, for the young people were full of life and health, and eager to see everything—not once, but twice and sometimes three times. I was getting tired and glad of a rest in Paris, where at the Bellevue I was taking my breakfast one morning in our salon, while Katy and Jack were looking up some route presumably to Italy, our next objective point. They were evidently greatly interested and even excited, but were talking so low that I could not catch a word, as I sat and watched them with feelings of pride and half envy of their youth and spirits which could enjoy everything and endure everything.

Katy was a beautiful girl of eighteen, with large blue eyes and a sweet, flower-like face, and hair something the shade mine had been when young, but much darker, with glints of reddish gold showing on it in the sunlight. 110I was very proud of Katy and of her brother Jack, with his frank, handsome face and a manliness about him one would hardly expect in a lad of fifteen. He had constituted himself the leader of our party and usually had the best route and trains and hotels picked out, and I felt sure the subject of their discussion now was the journey to Italy. It was the last of November and the wind was blowing cold and raw through the boulevards, and the basket of wood Louis brought us gave but little heat.

I was always cold, and was longing for Naples and Sorrento, and was upon the point of suggesting that we start at once, when Katy, whose dead mother looked at me through her blue eyes, and to whom I seldom refused a request, startled me by saying, a little hesitatingly, as if she did not quite know how I would take it:

“Jack and I have been looking up the route and how long it will take, and we want to go to Russia. You remember those people from Boston whom we met last week at the Louvre. Well, we met them again yesterday, when you were not with us. They were in Russia last winter, and, say, you might as well not come to Europe at all as not to go there in the winter. I don’t care for Rome and the pope and the Vatican and the 111Forum and the house where Paul lived. I want to see Russia!”

“See Russia!” I gasped. “Have you any idea how cold it is there, or will be soon?”

“Oh, yes,” she replied, “the Boston people told us ever so much and loaned us a book. Jack and I read up about it last night after you went to bed. You wondered why we were up so late. We read till midnight, and, like the girl who had been in Rome eight days and knew it thoroughly, we know Russia pretty well—St. Petersburg, I mean. That’s where we want to go—the place where your hat freezes to your head, your veil to your face, and if you shut your eyes when they are full of water your lids freeze together. That’s what some writer says, and I want to know if it is true, and see St. Isaac’s and the fortress, and the Winter Palace, and skate on the Neva. It’s such fun, the Hales said. That’s the name of the Boston family—Hale——”

“And I,” Jack began, coming forward with a map in his hand, “I want to see the czar and his wife and the grand dukes and all his folks, and the funny old coachmen, stuffed till they look like barrels, and I want an adventure with a gendarme and a nihilist, such as you had; and oh! I want to see Chance, if he is still alive. 112And I want to see the three houses so big that it takes you half an hour to walk past them. I don’t believe it, but I want to see them just the same. Russia will be jollier than Italy. Will you go? It will cost a lot, I know, but father will send us the money. I heard him tell you when we left home to let us see everything, as it was a part of our education, and we might never come again. Will you go?”

I was too much surprised to give a direct answer.

“I will think about it,” I said. “Go to the Louvre, or where you like, and when you come back I will tell you.”

“All right,” Jack said, in the tone of one who has won a victory, while Katy stooped and kissed me, saying:

“Auntie always means ‘yes’ when she says she will think about it; so, think hard and fast.”

Then they left me, and I was thinking hard—not so much, I am afraid, of the proposed trip to Russia as of the incidents of my former visit there, and I was surprised to find how my heart went out to that far-off city, which I had never expected to see again, and from which I had heard but once since my return to America 113three years ago. Not long after Christmas there had come to me a package containing eight photographs of Chance, looking just as he had looked when waiting for me at the hotel. There was also a letter from M. Seguin, which I read with an eagerness of which I was ashamed. It was written in a cramped back hand, not very plain, and began:

“Dear Miss Harding: I send you eight pictures of Chance—one for each of the Massachusetts women who were here last summer and made a little diversion in my life. I hope you will like the picture. I had some difficulty in making him keep still, until I spoke of you, when he quieted down at once and assumed the attitude he used to take when waiting for you. I believe that at the sound of your name he thought he was waiting again, and that you would soon appear. For three or four days after you left he went regularly each morning to the hotel, and sat for an hour or two watching everyone who came out, and when you did not come he started for the station where he had last seen you and where he waited until, growing discouraged, he came home and stretched himself out upon the floor with his head between his paws. Poor, disappointed Chance! I was sorry for him, for I knew how he felt.

“I see I have mentioned the dog first when I ought to have spoken of your friend, Nicol Patoff. He remains 114in statu quo, and I have given him up. I often see the old drosky driver, and two or three times have taken his rattletrap. He always asks for the little madame whom he drove first and last in the city, and says you were a ‘frisky little thing’! I think he meant nervous. Occasionally I see your hat on the head of that tangle-haired girl. Zaidee is her name. Perhaps you never knew. The last time I saw her she was sporting a long blue veil picked up in some quarter. Ursula has gone to Siberia to join her husband, and Carl, her nephew, has gone with her. He brought back the silver himself, and said he was going to turn over a new leaf and be a man, and all because you called off the dog and did not let him fall into the hands of Paul Strigoff. How they all hate that man! I gave Carl a ruble, more for your sake than his, although he has not a bad face. I saw them at the station when they went away. Ursula had a knot of tri-colored ribbon on her dress, such as you used to wear. I asked her where she got it. She bridled at once and replied: ‘I didn’t steal it. It was given me by the best and sweetest woman the Lord ever made.’ I nodded that I fully agreed with her, as she continued: ‘If you ever see her, tell her I have never forgotten her kindness to Carl, and I shall pray for her every day in Siberia.’

“‘What will you take for that knot of ribbon? I’d like to buy it,’ I said; and she fired up like a volcano, 115telling me I had not money enough, nor the czar either, to buy it!

“I have a good deal of respect for Ursula, and the last glimpse I had of her the tri-colors, red, white and blue, were showing conspicuously on her black dress. My mother returned home in September, and I am no longer keeping bachelor’s hall. I have told her of you and your interest in Nicol Patoff, in whom she is also greatly interested.”

There were a few more commonplace sentences and the letter closed with: “Your sincere friend, Michel Seguin.”

There was no intimation that he expected an answer to his letter, but common courtesy required that I should acknowledge the receipt of the photographs, which I did, directing my letter to “M. Seguin, Nevsky Prospect, St. Petersburg.” Whether he received my letter or not I did not know. He did not write again, and with the passing of time my visit to Russia was beginning to seem like a dream, when I found myself trying to decide whether to go there again, and wondering why my inclination leaned so strongly to that ice-bound city, and why the tall figure of a gendarme always stood in the foreground as an attraction. He might not be there, and Nicol Patoff had disappeared, or was dead. I could have no hope of seeing him. Why then was I 116willing to go? I asked myself, and answered as quickly: “To see Chance, if he is there still.”

And so, the die was cast; and two weeks later we took the train in Paris en route for St Petersburg. We were hoping to have our compartment to ourselves for a while at least, and had each taken possession of a corner, when at the last moment a tall, fine-looking young lady came hurrying to the door which was still open, although Jack, who was nearest to it, had wished to shut it. There was a close, searching glance at each of us, and then the young lady entered with her cloak and gripsack, while Jack scowled a little. He always scowled if he did not like anything, and he evidently did not like the companionship of this young lady, who took her seat by the window opposite him, after greeting us with a smile which lighted up her face wonderfully and smoothed the scowl from Jack’s forehead.

She had put her bag on the seat beside her and then glanced up at the rack opposite. Jack, who was always a gentleman, rose at once for her. Of course she was French, he thought, and so did Katy and I, her dress was in such perfect taste, while there was about her an air altogether Parisian. Summoning his best French, which 117was pretty bad, Jack said: “I will put up your bag, if it is in your way.”

The words were jumbled together in an atrocious manner; but the young lady understood and thanked him in perfect French and with a smile which showed her white, even teeth and brought into play a dimple on her cheek. Then she relaxed into silence, and, leaning back in her corner, closed her eyes and drew down her fur cap as if she were asleep. But when we passed the city limits and were speeding through the country miles from Paris she became very much awake, and her eyes flashed upon each of us, resting longest and very admiringly upon Katy, who certainly made a pretty picture in her suit of brown with a scarlet wing in her hat. I had impressed upon my nephew and niece that they were not to talk to strangers unless spoken to first, and then to be rather reticent. This rule Katy carried to an extent which sometimes made her seem haughty and cold, while Jack was always ready to talk and ask questions and find out about things, as he expressed it. On this occasion, as the day wore on, I often saw him casting glances at the young lady who slept a good deal, or seemed to, and who, when awake, paid no attention to what we were saying.

118“She does not understand us,” I thought; but when at last we began to speak of Russia she roused up, and I felt sure she understood and was interested.

Still she remained silent, and we talked on, or Jack did, of St. Petersburg and the Nevsky and the Neva, and the nihilists, whose acquaintance he hoped to make, wondering if there was any way by which he could tell one. Then he spoke of the dog Chance, hoping he was still alive, and finally of his master, M. Seguin, wondering if we should meet him.

“You and he were quite friendly, weren’t you, auntie?” he asked, but I did not reply.

I was fascinated by the expression of the young lady’s face, or rather of her eyes, which from brown seemed to have turned to black and were blazing with a fierce, angry light. Did she know Michel Seguin that she was so excited at the mention of his name, and who was she? My curiosity was roused, and still I said nothing, except to answer Jack, who finally asked if I had ever heard what became of the poor wretch who asked alms of me on the Court Quay and who proved to be a notorious nihilist and was arrested.

“You wrote a note to his wife, didn’t you?” Jack continued. “Do you suppose he was sent to Siberia?”

119The window on Jack’s side had been shut, but now the young girl opened it quickly and thrust her head out for air. Then withdrawing it, she electrified us by saying, in excellent English, although with an accent:

“Excuse me if I keep the window open a moment. I have sudden spells of being faint, and it seems rather close.”

“Oh,” Jack said. “You speak English! I thought you were French.”

“Oh, no,” and she laughed, showing her white teeth again, “I am not French. I am a Russian from St. Petersburg.”

“A Russian!” Katy and Jack repeated in a breath.

“I’m so glad,” Jack went on. “We are going to Russia, to St. Petersburg, and you can tell us a lot.”

She smiled at the boy’s enthusiasm, and smiled more as, forgetting that he was not to talk to strangers, he continued: “We—that is, Katy and I—are Katy and Jack Barton. She is Katy, and I am Jack. Mother died when I was born. We live in Washington, where father, who was a colonel in the army, has something to do in the Pension Office. Aunt Lucy Harding is our aunt. She has been in St. Petersburg and speaks the language 120like a native. She had lots of mixups with nihilists and things, and a big dog, Chance.”

He stopped to take breath, while the young lady put her head from the window again to get the air. She was very white when she sat back in her corner and closed her eyes, in which I was sure there were tears, for she held her handkerchief to them for a moment. Then she recovered herself and smiled very brightly upon the loquacious boy, who rattled on: “That dog Chance must be a case. Auntie has a picture of him. Did you ever see him?”

“I have heard of him as a remarkable dog, who, once on the scent of a fugitive, seldom fails to find him; but I don’t think he is often used for that purpose. Indeed, I know he is not,” she replied, and I was sure her fine face darkened for a moment as if Chance were not an interesting topic.

The air was getting chilly and damp, for a rain was coming on, and the young lady closed the window; and after a moment, during which she seemed to be thinking, she said, addressing herself to me:

“Your nephew has introduced your party, and as we are bound for the same destination, I will present myself.”

121Then she told us that her name was Sophie Scholaskie, that she was born in St. Petersburg, where her mother, who was a widow, was now living. Her grandmother lived in London, where Sophie had been at school two years, and this accounted for her good English. She had a twin brother—Ivan, who at present was employed at the Bon Marché, in Paris.

“You have been there, of course?” she said.

I had a very vivid remembrance of many hundred francs spent at the Bon Marché, and said so, while she continued:

“You may have seen him then. He is at a silk counter—an English speaking clerk as well as Russian. He meets many Americans, and is, I believe, quite popular with them. We look very much alike. If we exchanged clothes you could hardly tell one from another, although he is rather small for a man—five feet seven—and I am big for a woman—too big! We can wear each other’s clothes and gloves,” and she laughingly held up two large white hands. “No. 7, and very strong!”

Now that she had commenced to talk she was very communicative, and seemed anxious to tell us about herself and family. Her grandfather on her father’s side had been one of the minor nobility before the emancipation 122act, by which he lost his serfs and a large proportion of his land. After that with many others he migrated to St. Petersburg, where he received an office under the government. His home was on the Nevsky, where her father and grandfather lived together until——

She stopped a moment and looked out upon the dusky landscape with an expression I did not like, it was so full of resentment and hatred. Drawing a long breath, she continued:

“My father, who was one of the best and noblest of men and would scorn to do a mean act, died—in—Siberia, where he was sent!”

“Oh, jolly!” Jack exclaimed, springing to his feet. “He was a nihilist! And you are one! I am so glad! I wanted to see you; but did not suppose they were like you.”

“Sit down, Jack, and be quiet,” I said.

Sophie’s face underwent many colors, but finally subsided into a pallid hue as she tried to laugh, and said:

“My father was a nihilist, though not the murderous kind. He did not believe in that. He was not an anarchist, and when the czar was killed in ‘81 no one regretted it more than he did. I scarcely know of what he was suspected. It takes so little to put one under a 123ban, and when the bloodhounds are on your track, you are doomed. For a time my father eluded them, but he was caught at last and sent at once to Siberia, with scarcely a hearing and no chance to defend himself. I believe the dreadful journey was made as easy for him as possible, and he was not put to hard labor; indeed, he did not labor at all, for he died within three months. He was the idol of his father, who died of a broken heart soon after hearing the sad news that his son was dead. Pride, I think, had something to do with it, for the Scholaskies are a proud race; and the dear old man, with his long white hair and majestic appearance and courtly manners, sank under the blow which had humiliated him so much. We lost the greater part of our money and our handsome house on the Nevsky, where Ivan and I were once so happy, with no care or thought for the morrow. Now we live in an apartment house on another street, and Ivan and I work for our living. He is a salesman and I am a teacher of music—German, Russian and English—in Paris, so that we keep our mother in comfort, if not in the luxury to which she was once accustomed. I have told you my history in brief, and shall be glad to be of any assistance to you while you are in the city.”

124She seemed tired and heated and took off the fur cap she wore and wiped the drops of sweat which had gathered so thickly upon her face. She was handsomer with her cap off, for one could see her white, well-shaped forehead and mass of soft, brown, wavy hair, which was brought up just over her ears and twisted in a large, flat knot in her neck.

During her recital, which had taken some time, as she stopped often, as if talking were painful, Jack had given vent to many exclamations of anger and disgust, and had once clinched his fists as if ready to fight some one. Katy sat perfectly still and scarcely gave a sign that she had heard; but when the story was finished she left her seat by the window and sat down beside Sophie, whose hand she took in hers, pressing it in token of her sympathy.

“I am so sorry for you,” she said; “and I don’t know that I want to go to Russia.”

“I do!” Jack exclaimed. “I want to lick ’em.”

This created a diversion, at which we all laughed, and no one more heartily than Sophie.

“Better keep quiet, my boy,” she said. “You can do no good. No one can help us but God, and sometimes it seems as if He had forgotten. But He will remember; 125there will be a change, I don’t know how or when, but old men and women who pretend to read the future see a heavy cloud over Russia—a cloud red with the blood of her children, yet with a silver lining which means liberty to the oppressed. May I live to see it!”

Her face glowed with intense excitement as she talked, and the hand which Katy had taken withdrew itself from her grasp and Sophie’s arm went across the young girl’s shoulder with so firm a grip that she winced under the embrace. Releasing herself as soon as possible Katy went back to her seat in the corner, where she sat very quiet the rest of the day, while Sophie and Jack had the most of the conversation, Jack asking questions and Sophie answering them to the best of her ability.

When at last we reached the frontier the first word we heard was “Passports,” spoken rather peremptorily by a tall, uniformed soldier, who motioned us into a side room where our baggage was brought with that of the other passengers. I was glad now for Sophie’s help. My first entrance into Russia had been by water and with comparatively little trouble. I had been met by M. Seguin, and I found myself looking round involuntarily in hopes of seeing him now, although I knew the hope was futile. The officers were very different in 126looks and manner from him. They were rather cross, and there were a good many passengers clamoring for passports to be returned and their baggage to be examined and viséed. I was tired, like the officials, and impatient at the delay, as I saw no reason why business should not be dispatched as it is in America instead of the leisurely way natural to the Russians. Jack was very much excited, and if he could have spoken the language he would have given the lazy officials fits, he said. As it was he caught hold of one who was leisurely inspecting my trunk and said: “Look here, you, sir; that is my auntie’s and there’s nothing in it, and she wants it some time to-day. Do you speak English?”

The officer stared blankly at him and shook his head, while Jack, who felt himself the man of the party, continued: “Parlez vous Français, then, if you don’t speak English?”

There was a second head shake, and Jack went on: “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”

A third shake of the head, with a laugh which exasperated the boy.

“Confound you!” he said. “What do you speak? I tell you we are in a hurry to get out of this stuffy hole into the next room, and we are Americans—Americans!”

127He screamed the last two words as if the man were deaf, and somehow they had their effect, or would have had without my help, for the word American goes a long way toward insuring respect from a Russian. The room was crowded with first, second and third-class passengers, and my head was in a whirl, aching badly, and this had kept me quiet for a time while the babel went on. Now, however, I rallied, not knowing how much the officials could understand, or to what lengths Jack might go. He had been rather free during all our journeyings to inform people that he was an American, from Washington, where his father, who was a colonel, held an office; and I was expecting him to give this last piece of information to the crowd when both Sophie and I went to the rescue. She had been attending to her own trunk, and I was very sure that more than one or two rubles had changed hands. Her baggage was examined, or pretended to be, her trunk viséed, and then she turned toward us. What she said I don’t know, it was spoken so low, but I heard the word America, and our passports were at once given to us, our trunks examined in a perfunctory way, and we were free to enter the waiting room. Some of Sophie’s friends had come to meet her, both men and women, and that she was 128held in high favor was shown by their evident delight at meeting her. I heard Ivan’s name and supposed they were inquiring for him, but did not hear her reply, as she stood with her back to me. We were to separate here, as she was to go with her friends, while we were to have our own private compartment, telegraphed for in advance.

“I shall see you soon again,” Sophie said to us as she bade us good-by and stood for a moment with her fur cloak wrapped round her and her cap drawn down upon her face.

There was something about her which puzzled me and made me think it might be safe not to be too intimate with her. I believed her a nihilist of a pronounced type, who might unwittingly get us into trouble; but I did not say so, for Jack and Katy were full of her praises. They lamented greatly that she was not to be with us in the long, dreary journey to St. Petersburg, with nothing to look at but snow, snow everywhere and more coming, first in large, feathery flakes, which gradually grew smaller until they came sifting down in clouds which the wind sometimes took up and sent whirling across the bleak plains in a blizzard. Whenever we stopped and there was time, Sophie came to our section, bringing 129with her a world of cheer to the young people, who, without her calls, would have found the journey depressing. As it was, it seemed interminable, and we were glad when we at last rolled into the station at St. Petersburg. I had recovered from my headache and was able to see to my own baggage without Jack’s loud assurance that we were Americans and Sophie’s offer of assistance. There seemed to be a good many of her friends to meet her here as there had been at the frontier, and she was attended like a princess to the smartly equipped sleigh waiting for her. For a moment we stood watching her as she moved along holding up her cloth skirt to avoid the snow and showing her tightly fitting boots with their French heels.

“Almighty big feet for a girl, but then she is big all over,” was Jack’s comment as we turned to the sledge which was to take us to our hotel.

It was the same where I had stopped three years before, and as I had telegraphed for the room I had then occupied I found it ready for me, with a small one adjoining for Jack, who insisted upon registering, and made a great flourish of Washington, D. C., U. S. A., as if that would insure us attention. We did not need it, for the employees were ready to serve madame, whom 130they remembered, while Boots, who was still at his post and not much grown, nearly fell down in his eagerness to show me to my room, which was warm and comfortable and brightened with a bouquet of hothouse flowers standing on a little table near a window.

The feeling of homesickness and dread of some calamity I was to meet, which had been tightening around my heart ever since I reached the snow-girt city, began to give way.

I was ashamed of myself for having felt disappointed at not seeing M. Seguin either at the station, or in the street, or at the hotel. He did not know I was coming, and how could he be there? Besides, why should he be there, anyhow? I was a mere acquaintance of three years ago. I had passed out of his life and he out of mine. The memory of those in whom I had been interested in St. Petersburg had faded. Probably Nicol Patoff was dead, and if he were not, my heart did not beat as rapidly at thought of him as it once had done. Of all the crowd who had waved me a good-by when I left the city there was not one to greet me on my return, and I had felt a positive ache all the way from the station to the hotel, and wanted to cry when I entered the old familiar room which brought back so many 131memories. But the flowers changed everything. Somebody had thought of me. Somebody had sent me a welcome. Who was it? I asked Boots; but he did not know. They had come a few hours before for the American lady, Madame Garden—that was all he knew, and I was left to my own conjectures.

Katy and Jack were delighted with the hotel and wanted to go at once into the street. But I was too tired to go with them. Jack would have gone alone, armed with Washington and America, and possibly Abraham Lincoln, as defenses against any danger. But I kept him in, and was glad when the short wintry afternoon drew to a close and the night came down upon the great city and its gay, animated streets.

CHAPTER IX. SOPHIE AS GUIDE.

We had been in St. Petersburg nearly a week, and during that time Jack and Katy had seen a great deal under the guidance of Sophie, who, true to her promise, came to us the day after our arrival and offered to take us wherever we wished to go. I had thought I knew St. Petersburg well, but with its dress of snow and ice, and the thermometer twenty below zero, it seemed to me a new city, and I was glad of her escort. I had, however, taken the precaution to ask the landlord confidentially if he knew the Scholaskies.

“Oh, yes,” he answered. “Madame Scholaskie is well known. Her husband died in Siberia,” and he gave his shoulders a shrug. “They are fine people; once among the first—that is, the medium first. I hear Mademoiselle Sophie is home for a little visit. Splendid-looking girl!”

After this I felt quite at ease when Sophie took the young people out sight-seeing, while I stayed at home by the fire, for I was cold in the open air and glad to keep out of it. St. Petersburg was not much like what 133it had been in summer when sometimes scarcely a person was to be seen on its long, wide streets. Now these same streets buzzed with life, and no one seemed to mind the cold any more than they had the heat. The czar was at the palace, and the Nevsky and Court Quay were full of gay equipages, driving at a headlong pace. The tinkle of the bells filled the frosty air with a kind of monotonous music not altogether unpleasing. The Neva, which in winter is the great highway of the city, was frozen solid, and although the Blessing of the Waters had not yet taken place, it was crowded with the best and worst people in town. There were spaces for skating, race courses for sledges and artificial hills down which bold persons could guide their sledges alone to the imminent peril of their lives. And all this Katy and Jack saw, and much more, and came home crammed with knowledge and unloaded it to me—for I was supposed to know nothing whatever of all they told me. Jack had commenced keeping a journal in which, boylike, he jotted down incidents as they came to his mind, without much attention to order. This he frequently gave me to read when I was shut in by the cold, saying it would amuse me, and it did. This is how he began:

“St. Pe——, Russia!” he began. “Most thundering 134cold day you ever knew, and they are all just like it. Wednesday Sophie came for us at eleven o’clock. That’s early here. The sun doesn’t get up till nine. Nobody gets up. The gold ball on St. Isaac’s is over three hundred feet from the ground. It’s an all-fired big building; built on piles driven into the mud. Had to bring a whole forest of ’em from the country. All the houses are on wooden legs, and sometimes the legs give out; then they tip.

“Saw the emperor to-day. Not much to see more than any man. Didn’t look as if he enjoyed his drive. I believe he was all the time thinking there might be a bomb somewhere. I wouldn’t be emperor of Russia. No, sir! I’d rather be Jack Barton, from Washington, D. C., U. S. A. Yes, sir! They say he has six hundred rooms at his palace in Gatschina and only lives in six for fear of being killed. Poor emperor! I don’t wonder he looks sorry and scared. Has to have two hundred cooks to prepare a meal, they say. What a lot he must eat! and at Tzarsko Selo he has six hundred men to work his farm. Must take something to pay ’em! I tell you the Nevsky is a case! and the Neva is bigger, and Sophie is about as big as both of ’em! She knows the city, root and branch, and the people, too, and they know her, but 135sometimes she acts queer, as if in a hurry to get away from them. I saw a gendarme looking at her pretty sharp, and told her so. She laughed and said: ‘Let him look!’ Well, she is something to look at; she is so tall and big. I like her, and so does Katy, and she likes Katy, and once or twice, all on a sudden, she has hugged Katy as if she wished to eat her, and Katy is awful pretty in her scarlet hood with the ermine trimming. People look at her hard. Men, too, and then Sophie gets angry and hurries us along.

“Chance is not at home. Sophie found that out for me. He is in Moscow with his master. I hope he will come pretty soon. To-morrow we are going to drive, Sophie and auntie, Katy and I. Auntie don’t go out much; just sits by the fire and mopes. She isn’t half as up and coming as she used to be. I wonder what ails her!”

The day after Jack made his last entry we took the drive in a smart turnout, for we were Sophie’s guests for the time and she did nothing small. All along the crowded Nevsky we went until we came to the street where I had my encounter with Carl.

“Would you mind driving down that way a little?” I asked.

136Sophie looked her surprise, but was too well-bred to refuse or ask why I wished to go into so unfashionable a quarter.

“I knew an old lady who lived in that house,” I said, pointing to the door where Ursula had sat when Carl made his attack on me.

It was closed now, with no sign of life about it, and the untrodden snow was piled high against it.

“No one lives here. She is in Siberia still. We may as well go back,” I said.

At the mention of Siberia Sophie became excited at once, asking who Ursula was and how I came to know her. I told her all I cared to, keeping back as much as possible the part M. Seguin and Chance had played in the matter. Evidently she did not care to hear of them, but as we were coming near the house on our return, I asked if she knew Madame Seguin.

“Only by reputation,” she answered. “They say she is very aristocratic—sees few people, but sits in her great house nursing her pride in what she used to be before they lost so much property when the serfs were emancipated. We lost, too, but we kept up a brave, cheerful heart till father was arrested. There is Madame Seguin now, just returning from her drive,” she continued, 137nodding toward a handsome sledge drawn by two spirited horses, with a coachman in livery.

The lady in the sledge was wrapped in the richest of furs and sat up as erect as a young girl. Only her eyes were visible, and they were beady and black and not at all like what I could see of Michel’s eyes. She did not glance toward us, but held her head high as we passed each other.

“They say she does not like her son’s occupation,” Sophie said. “Not that she is unwilling to have people arrested, but she wants some one to do it besides her son. No one knows why he took it up. There was no need of it, as they have money enough, I am told, outside their losses.”

Somehow I did not like to hear Sophie talk of Michel or his family, and was glad when she changed the conversation by saying, as we approached a large building:

“This was once our house, where we lived until father was sent away and grandfather died. We were very happy there.”

At her command the coachman was driving slowly, that we might have a better look at her old home. It was larger and more pretentious than the Seguins’, and I could understand what Sophie’s feeling were as she looked at 138it and knew it had gone from her forever. Withdrawing her hand from her muff I saw Katy put it into Sophie’s, and knew the two hands had met in a warm clasp of sympathy.

After a moment she added with a laugh:

“I believe you Americans have a saying, ‘It is of no use to cry over spilled milk,’ and I don’t cry now, though I did at first till I was nearly blind. Mother never cried; she couldn’t, and that made it harder for her. By the way, I had nearly forgotten my message from her. She sends her compliments to you and hopes you will waive the ceremony of her calling, as she seldom goes out, but she will be very glad if you will take supper with us to-morrow night at six o’clock. We have given up ceremonious dinners since we lived in apartments, and have, instead, the old-fashioned supper, with one servant to wait upon us. You will come?”

“Of course we will!” Jack spoke up, promptly, while I hesitated a little, not knowing whether to accept or not.

“Yes, we’ll go,” Katy said, nestling closer to Sophie, between whom and herself a warm friendship had risen.

Sophie’s magnetism had conquered Katy’s shyness, and they were fast friends, and when she said “We’ll go,” I assented, after asking if we were to meet any strangers.

139“You will meet no one but my mother, who is very anxious to see you,” Sophie replied, and, with that, we bade her good-by at the door of the hotel.

That night Jack wrote in his journal:

“Had a drive with Sophie in a dandy turnout. Everybody was out, and everybody looked at us, especially at Sophie.

“I tell you what, that girl is a brick! And what a lot of people she bowed to on the Nevsky, and down in that street where we went hunting for Ursula. Everybody seemed to know her. I’ll bet she’s a real nihilist, and has a whole crowd of followers. I’m glad that gendarme is not at home. He might be nabbing her. We are going there to-morrow night to supper. Auntie does not act as if she wanted to go; says she feels as if something was going to happen. What rot! I’m afraid she’s getting old and nervous. I wish something would happen.”

CHAPTER X. ONE EVENING.

Madame Scholaskie’s rooms were on a side street in an apartment house, which was in striking contrast to the house on the Nevsky, where fifty or sixty servants had done their mistress’ bidding. There seemed to be but one here, a woman wrinkled and old, but straight as an arrow, with a keen look in her eyes as if she were always on the alert and ready for whatever might come. The Scholaskies’ rooms were on the third floor, and surprised us with their handsome furnishings, from the golden-framed icon to the ivy-covered screen which shut off one end of the salon. Madame, too, was a surprise, as, with her snow-white hair, her piercing, black eyes, and faded, velvet gown, which told of better days, she came forward to greet us. If not an aristocrat, as the Russians understand the term, she was a lady born, and showed it in her manner, her language and her voice.

Supper was announced soon after our arrival, and, if there were not many courses, it had been daintily cooked, and was served by old Drusa with the deftness of a 141younger person. Everything was perfect, from the linen to the silver and china.

When supper was over, and we returned to the drawing room, where we had tea, madame took from her pocket a paper, yellow and worn, and, holding it toward me, said:

“You sent me this three years ago.”

I recognized it as the note I had written for the beggar, and answered in the affirmative.

“But how do you know I am the one who sent it?” I asked.

“Your nephew let it out in the train, and Sophie told me. She telegraphed me that you were coming, and I sent some flowers for you to the hotel. I hope you received them? They are sometimes careless in such matters.”

“I never knew who sent them, and I thank you so much,” I said.

After a moment, madame continued:

“I run no risk in telling you that the man you befriended was my husband, and a nihilist, who had long eluded detection. He was fond of disguises. I think it is in the family,” and her eyes rested for a moment on Sophie, who stood with her back to her mother. “That 142of a beggar was his favorite, and had done him good service many times, but failed him at the last. He was arrested and tried, and sent to Siberia, where he died within three months. His father, who lived with us, did not long survive him, and we were left alone. He had spent a great deal of money for the cause he believed to be right. Our house on the Nevsky was heavily mortgaged. We lost it, and came here. It is a special Providence which has thrown you in my way, to thank you for your kindness to him. I try to be cheerful, but I know we are living over a volcano, which may engulf us at any time.”

“But what harm can come to you, living here alone?” I asked.

Before she could reply, Sophie said:

“None whatever. She is nervous, and has been so ever since they took my father away. It has a different effect on me. It makes me—— But why talk about it? Do you all play cards?”

She turned to Jack, who, knowing the Russian habit, answered:

“Yes; but not for money, as you do.”

“I know. You play for fun. Then let it be fun; Drusa, bring the table!”

143

“Drusa had opened the door and a tall gendarme entered the room.”

145Madame would not play, and I took her place, with Katy for my partner, and Jack and Sophie for our opponents. Sophie was an expert player, and chafed a little under Jack’s blunders. But, on the whole, we were getting on very well, and Sophie was dealing for the third hand, when old Drusa came in, unannounced, twisting her apron in her hands, and standing with her back to the door, as if to keep some one out.

“What is it, Drusa?” madame asked, and her voice shook a little.

“There is an officer here, asking to see you,” Drusa replied, in a whisper, which, nevertheless, seemed to me to fill the room from corner to corner with its dread meaning.

For an instant madame’s face blanched to the color of a corpse, and there was a look of anguish in her eyes, as she glanced at her daughter.

“An officer to see me! What does he want?” she whispered, for I was sure she could not speak aloud.

Sophie was perfectly calm, except for the hard expression on her face and the defiant look in her eyes.

“Don’t whisper,” she said, loud enough to be heard by anyone outside the door, if he were listening. “We have nothing to fear from a hundred officers. Show him in!”

146“Oh, Sophie!” her mother gasped, but she was too late.

Drusa had opened the door, and a tall gendarme entered the room, briskly at first, with an air of assurance, but stopping short when his eyes fell on me.

“Michel Seguin!” I exclaimed, in what seemed to me a whisper, but he heard me, and the expression of his face changed to one of perplexity, as if his next step was hard to take.

“Miss Harding!” he replied, with more surprise than pleasure in his voice. “I heard you were in the city, but did not expect to meet you here. How came you here to-night, of all places?”

He had given me his hand, and was standing close to Jack, who looked at him in wonder, not understanding what it all meant.

“And why shouldn’t she be here, may I ask?” Sophie proudly demanded. “What is there here to contaminate her, that you lay such emphasis on it?”

The officer did not answer her. He was evidently nerving himself to do his duty, and turning to madame, who sat like one dead, he said:

“I did not know you had company; I would have waited, in that case, for what I come to do will be exceedingly 147unpleasant to Miss Harding. I am sent here to arrest your son, Ivan Scholaskie, for aiding and abetting in a plot which we have been trying to unearth for some time.”

Again that corpselike pallor spread over madame’s face, and, drawing herself up, with a regal air, she replied:

“When my son last wrote me, he was in Paris. You will have to seek him there.”

“He might have been in Paris when he last wrote you, but at twelve o’clock last night and the night before he was seen coming from a suspected quarter, and he entered this house. It is my duty to search for him, although, I assure you, I am sorry to give you trouble, and before your friends, too.”

He looked at me in an apologetic kind of way, as if he wished himself anywhere but there. I was horrified, and trembled like a leaf; while Katy and Jack, although they could not understand what was said, knew something was wrong, and looked anxiously at me. I explained, in a few words, whereat Jack eyed the gendarme scowlingly, clinching his fist once, as if ready to fight, if necessary. Sophie alone was calm, although her face was pale and there was a bluish look around her lips. 148She had turned up the ace of spades, and was adjusting her cards, as if nothing unusual were happening.

“Let him search! You can’t prevent it,” she said to her mother. “But, as I have a good hand and want to play it, there’s no reason why we should not go on with our game, unless you wish to look under the table first!”

This to the gendarme, as, with her large, white hand she swept aside the folds of her dress, disclosing nothing worse than four pairs of feet huddled together in a small space, for the table was not a large one. Sophie’s eyes blazed with scorn as they rested on the gendarme, who must have been impressed with her beauty. She had never looked handsomer than she did that night, in her dress of crimson satin and velvet, which fitted her perfectly. It was trimmed with knots of old lace here and there. A small diamond pin was the only ornament she wore. Her ears had never been pierced, and there were no rings on her fingers, at which I wondered a little, for her hands, though large, were white and well-shaped, and showed no signs of work.

Regarding her fixedly for a moment, while a peculiar smile flitted across his face, the gendarme said:

“Allow me, mademoiselle, to say that Paris agrees with you. I have never seen you looking better. You 149must have gained a good many pounds in that gay city. The last time I had the pleasure of meeting you, you were not as stout as you are now.”

It was a strange speech, and I rather resented it. Sophie did not deign to reply, but sat with her skirts drawn back, that he might see under the table.

“I do not think he is there,” he continued; “and, I assure you, I have no special desire to arrest him, but I must do my duty. Your servant, perhaps, will take me through the rooms?”

“Certainly,” Sophie replied, mockingly. “I’d do it myself, but, you see, I am busy. Drusa,” and she turned to the old woman, who all the time had been standing by the door, with her jaw dropped and her eyes distended. “Drusa, show this man wherever there is a chance for anyone to be hiding; but, first, tell me, were you awake at midnight last night?”

“Yes, mademoiselle, wide awake. I mostly am.”

“Did you hear anyone enter the house?”

“No, mademoiselle; I heard footsteps go by; that might have been the man they tracked and thought was Mr. Ivan.”

“That will do,” Sophie said, motioning Drusa to conduct the gendarme into the adjoining rooms. “It’s your 150lead, I believe, and spades are trumps,” she continued, turning to me. I was shaking so I could scarcely hold my cards.

“Did you find him?” she asked, mockingly, when the gendarme returned from a search I knew had been of the most formal kind.

“Not this time, but later on,” he replied, with a look which made her face nearly the color of her dress.

At this point there came a scratching and pounding at the outer door, such as I had heard in old Ursula’s room.

“It is Chance,” I said, involuntarily, while Jack sprang up, nearly upsetting the table in his haste.

“Chance!” he repeated. “I must see him.”

I bade him sit down and be quiet, for it seemed to me that Chance’s advent into that room would be fraught with evil.

“You did a manly thing to bring your dog to hunt my brother! I would not have believed it of you!” Sophie said; and the officer replied: “I did not bring him, nor know that he followed me.”

“Then you will not let him in. I am afraid of dogs,” Sophie continued, her face now white with terror, as the scratching and whining went on, and in her eyes there was a piteous appeal.

151“No, I will not let him,” said the gendarme. “I think he would knock Miss Harding down in his delight at seeing her again.”

He looked at me, but I could not reply, except with an inclination of my head. I had never been so unstrung and nervous in my life.

“Oh, I wish I could see Chance, just for a minute! Can’t I go out?” Jack pleaded; but I shook my head.

Then the gendarme said to him, speaking in English for the first time:

“I will send him to the hotel to-morrow, or perhaps come with him and call.”

“That is better,” I said.

Jack, finding that M. Seguin spoke English, started up, exclaiming:

“Look here, you, sir! Auntie has told me you are looking for Miss Scholaskie’s brother. I tell you he is in Paris, at the Bon Marché. It is a shame to frighten us so.”

“When did you last see him at the Bon Marché?” Michel asked.

This was a puzzler. Jack had never seen him, but had taken Sophie’s word for it. He could not tell a lie, and he finally stammered: “He was there ten days ago, 152when his sister left Paris. She came in the train with us. That’s the way we know her.”

“Your argument is very conclusive,” Michel said; “but I still think he is in this city.”

Again Sophie’s eyes blazed with something more than anger, and there was a quaver of fear in her voice, as she said:

“Please let me know when you find him.”

“I certainly will,” was his reply, as he bowed politely and left the room.

Outside, we heard him whistle to Chance, and the two went rapidly down the walk. We sat silent for a moment. Jack was the first to speak.

“By George!” he exclaimed. “I shall get mixed up in a nihilist scrape, after all, I do believe—and that is what I wanted.”

“Would you like to be one of the chief actors?” Sophie asked.

“No, sir!” said Jack, emphatically; “and I wonder you could keep so cool, with that man hunting for your brother.”

“I knew he would not find him,” she said; “I know him, and I once knelt at his feet, asking permission to see my father before he started for Siberia, but was denied. 153Still, he is kind, in his way, they say, and he was kind to father.”

She tried to smile, but it was forced, as were all her actions after that. Katy said nothing. She was very pale, and so absent-minded that she at last threw down her cards, saying she was tired, and wanted to go home.

As she stood in the dressing room, with her scarlet hood tied under her chin, Sophie stooped over her, and said:

“May I kiss you once, as a dear, little girl from over the sea, where I wish to Heaven I had been born?”

I thought Katy hesitated a moment; then she lifted her face for the kisses Sophie gave her—passionate kisses, such as women seldom give to each other. Very little was said by either of us on our way home, or after our return to the hotel. We were puzzled and troubled, and half wished we had never seen Sophie Scholaskie.

In his journal that night Jack wrote: “Well, sir, I am getting what I wanted—a sprat with a gendarme.” Then followed a short account of the “sprat,” and Jack continued: “I was awful mad, but I rather liked the looks of Mr. Seguin. I wonder if Ivan was in the house? I kind of believe he was, don’t you?”

CHAPTER XI. A RUSSIAN FETE.

The next morning about ten o’clock Chance appeared, with his master, who had hard work to keep him from knocking me down. When he first saw me, he sprang upon me with both his paws; then ran round the room in circles and back again to me, licking my hands and face until M. Seguin called him off. Jack now took his attention, for dogs like boys, and the two were rolling over the floor, sometimes with Jack’s arms around the dog, and sometimes with Chance’s big paws encircling Jack. The noise they made enabled M. Seguin to say a few words to me of the occurrence of the previous night.

“I was so sure of him,” he said, “but I would not have gone had I known you were there. I only returned yesterday from Moscow, and heard at once that Ivan was in the city, and also that you were here. Zaidee told me that.”

“Zaidee!” I repeated, inquiringly.

“The girl to whom you gave your hat,” he explained. “I believe I have really done one good deed in my life. 155She stopped me one day and asked for you. Something in her face appealed to me. I knew she was from the lowest slums—a thief, most likely, and a nihilist, so far as she knows what that means. But I took a fancy to her, and she is now my mother’s waiting maid, becapped and white-aproned, and all that sort of thing—and bright as a guinea. She finds out everything that is going on, and I believe she knew Ivan was in town, but she would not tell me that. She’d warn him, if she could. I think she wants to come herself and thank you for the hat. She has it still among her treasures.”

Jack and Chance were tired out by this time—or the dog was—and, taking advantage of the lull, M. Seguin addressed the three of us, Katy, Jack and myself, saying his mother would like to see us at dinner that evening at seven o’clock.

“She has sent her card, and hopes you will take it for a call. She goes out very little, except to drive. She is quite old—seventy-five. I hope you will come.”

Katy and Jack looked their eagerness, and I felt constrained to accept, feeling a little anxious to see the inside of Nicol’s house again.

“Thanks. And now I must be off, as I am very busy.”

156“Hunting for Ivan?” Jack asked, with the recklessness of a boy.

“No,” Michel replied. “I can find him when I want him. Good-by.”

What did he mean? Did he really know where Ivan was? I hoped not, for my sympathy was with the woman whose face had worn such a look of despair when the gendarme appeared.

Katy was very silent all day, and very nervous, and once I saw tears in her eyes, as she stood looking out upon the snow-clad streets.

“Do you think Siberia much colder than it is here?” she asked, turning from the window, with a shiver.

I guessed then that she was thinking of Ivan, and his possible fate, if he were in the city. It was time now to dress for the grand dinner, which, I felt sure, would be grand, if there were only three guests present. Nor was I mistaken. At half-past six the two black horses and handsome sleigh in which we had seen madame came for us, and we were soon in the reception room of the Seguin house, which had undergone a great transformation since I was there three years before. Everything was in perfect order, showing the presence of a mistress, who met us at the door of the drawing room, stately and 157grand, in velvet and satin and lace and diamonds, and whose manner was that of a queen receiving her subjects, as she gave us the tips of her fingers. I felt that she was examining me critically with her sharp, black eyes. But I did not care. I knew I was a very presentable, and even handsome, woman. My dress was in perfect taste, and fitted me as only a French modiste could fit, and I felt fully madame’s equal in everything. My assurance must have impressed her, for she unbent a little. She was not rude; she was simply cold and distant and patronizing in her manner. I felt that in some way she did not approve of me, although she made an effort to be gracious. When dinner was announced, M. Seguin took me to the handsomely appointed table, with its profusion of flowers, its solid silver service and cut glass, with many courses, elaborately served by a waiter who knew his business perfectly. Close behind madame’s chair Zaidee stood—but it was a transformed Zaidee, whom I would never have recognized. Baths and clean clothes and comb and brush had done wonders for her, and, as she smiled a greeting to me, I said, involuntarily: “How do you do, Zaidee? I am glad to see you here.”

It was bad taste, of course, according to madame’s standard of etiquette, and her black eyes flashed a look 158of surprise and rebuke, while in her mind she put it down as a piece of American democracy for which she had no use. Zaidee knew enough not to answer me, but her bright eyes, which saw everything, twinkled, as she straightened herself behind her mistress’ chair, where she stood like an automaton through the dinner.

Why she stood there I did not know, unless it was to be within call if madame needed her for anything. Once, when madame was about to take sherry, she touched her arm very lightly, and the glass was put down.

Seeing that I noticed the act, madame said:

“I am apt to forget that sherry gives me a headache, and Zaidee helps me to remember. She is quite invaluable. I often wonder where Michel found her. He says ‘in the street,’ and she says ‘nowhere,’”

She evidently did not know about my old hat, or the flowers the girl had sent me. Neither did she or Michel know that the girl could speak a little English, and understood more; and it was not for me to enlighten them. Afterward I heard that more than once the sherry or champagne had made such havoc with madame’s head and feet that Zaidee had led her from the table to her room, where she had gone off into a heavy sleep, which 159lasted for hours. Zaidee kept guard over her like a watchdog, making excuse, if anyone called, that madame was suffering from one of her nervous headaches, and must not be disturbed.

She seemed invaluable to madame, who liked just such homage as the girl paid her. She was an out-and-out aristocrat, believing fully in absolute imperialism, and that every nihilist or anarchist who was caught received his just desert.

“Siberia or the knout for the whole of ’em!” she said, with a great deal of bitterness, when speaking of them; and I wondered how her son could be as kind as he was. She was very proud of him, but very sorry he had taken up a profession she felt was beneath him.

“Why did he do it?” I asked; and again the black eyes flashed upon me a look which made me feel that I had been impertinent.

“Ask him,” was her reply.

This was after dinner, when we were sitting in the drawing room by the fire, and Michel was smoking in the dining room by himself. As madame could speak English fairly well, she did so most of the time, for the sake of the children, to whom she seemed more favorably disposed than toward me. But Jack fell very low in her 160opinion as the conversation went on, and she spoke of Monte Carlo, where she hoped to go very soon, saying she usually went there every winter.

Jack, who had been strictly brought up to look upon gambling as wicked and low, said to her:

“You never play, of course?”

“Why not?” she asked, with a snap in her eyes and voice. “Why shouldn’t I play? Why do I go there except to play?”

Jack was not to be put down where his principles were concerned, and he answered, fearlessly, but politely:

“I did not suppose nice people like you played there. I have been taught that it was wrong, just like any gambling.”

“Puritan, as well as American,” madame said, with a look which ought to have silenced the boy; but he stood his ground, and answered:

“I am not a Puritan; I am an Episcopalian, and father is a vestryman.”

Michel had come in time to hear the last remark, and he burst into a hearty laugh, in which even madame joined, although she scarcely saw the point. Puritans and Episcopalians and vestrymen were the same to her. 161They were all Americans, whom she disliked and looked down upon. It was impossible to be very social with her, and, if it had ever occurred to me to ask her about Nicol Patoff, I should have abandoned the idea. But the house seemed full of him, and I could not help feeling that it was this way it had looked when he lived there. We did not go into Nicol’s den, where the portrait was; the door was shut, and I dared not take the liberty of asking to have it opened. Michel was a very different-looking man at home in evening dress from what he was on the street as a gendarme. Now he was the host, and a delightful one, as he talked mostly to Jack, asking him of life in Washington, and seeming greatly amused at the boy’s enthusiasm and patriotism, which would not admit that there was any land so fair as his own country.

“That’s right, my boy; stand up for your own. I half wish I were a citizen of the United States, and sometimes think I may yet go to them to live.”

He looked first at me, and then at his mother, whose eyes flashed with scorn, as she said:

“Are you crazy, to talk such rubbish?”

“Not at all, mother, dear,” he replied, laying his great hand on the small one resting on the arm of her chair, and caressing it until the frown disappeared from her 162face. “I have had serious thoughts of emigrating to America, and, but for you, I think I should.”

“Thank God for me, then! America, indeed!” she said, and her voice indicated her opinion of our country.

Just then Zaidee came in with a card, which she handed to Michel, and then courtesying to me, left the room.

“I am sorry,” Michel said, after reading the card, “but I am needed, and must go.”

“Is it that Scholaskie affair again?” madame asked, while my heart began to beat violently, and Katy turned pale.

“It is not. I am through with that,” Michel replied, with a look at me which was meant to reassure me.

After he was gone, madame said, more to herself than to us: “That young Scholaskie is giving the police a world of trouble. Michel was sure of him last night, but jailed. I hope he will be found, and the nest broken up.”

“What has he done?” I asked, and she replied, with a haughty toss of her head: “I am sure, I don’t know. I never ask what they have done. Plotted, of course, and stirred up bitter feelings against their superiors. The Scholaskies are a bad lot. The father was sent to Siberia, and the son will probably follow. I hear the 163daughter is at home, driving around in fine equipages, with a host of friends—all anarchists, I dare say, if the truth was known. I wish they were all——”

She did not finish the sentence, for just then Zaidee came in again on some whispered errand, and Chance bounded in after her, but was at once ordered out by my lady, who did not think a dog’s place was in the drawing room.

“I am told,” she said, “that, when I was gone, Michel had him at the table, and even let him sleep on one of the silken lounges in the daytime. The whole house seemed like a dog kennel when I came home, but we are having different arrangements now, and Chance must keep his place.”

Poor Chance! He sneaked into the hall and lay down on a mat, with his head between his paws and a cowed look in his brown eyes. Katy, Jack and I all stooped to caress him, as we came from the drawing room, for we left soon after Michel’s departure, and madame did not urge us to stay, or ask us to come again. She had done her duty to her son’s plebeian friends, and I had no doubt that, as the carriage which was to take us to the hotel rolled from the door, she said, or thought, “Thank Heaven, that is over!” just as we did.

CHAPTER XII. ON THE NEVA.

The next day Jack went out alone, hoping to meet Chance. On his return, he told us he had missed the dog, but had called on Sophie, who was suffering from a cold, and had not left the house since we had taken supper with her.

“She seemed awfully nervous,” he added. “I guess it was the search for Ivan that has upset her, though she didn’t speak of it. Her mother was sick in bed, and the house blue generally.”

He had asked Sophie to go with us that evening to the Neva. It was to be a kind of gala night, with fireworks and more bands of music than usual, and it was rumored that some of the court dignitaries were to be present, and Jack was very anxious to go. Sophie had hesitated at first, he said, saying she was tired of everything, and was going back to Paris as soon as her mother was better. At last, however, she was persuaded, and agreed to join us at a certain hour and place she named. Jack was in high spirits, but Katy was very quiet, just as 165she had been since the evening at Madame Scholaskie’s. She would like to see the fine sight, she said, but she was sorry Jack had persuaded Sophie, against her will, to join us. Two or three times she seemed on the point of telling me something, or asking something.

Twice she got as far as to begin: “Say, auntie——” and when I answered, “Yes. What is it?” she replied: “Oh, nothing. I only had a queer thought.”

What the thought was she did not tell me then, and by the time we were ready for the expedition she was as bright as usual, and had never looked lovelier. There was an eagerness in her manner which I had seldom seen. She could scarcely wait for us to start, and was more impatient than Jack, who had been counting the hours. Outside the hotel we found Chance, shaking his head, with a note in his mouth for me.

“Don’t go to the Neva to-night,” it read; “it is too cold. Wait till some other time!”

I was perplexed and mystified, and wondered how M. Seguin knew we were going upon the river.

“I know,” Jack said. “I met that girl Zaidee, who stood behind madame’s chair during the dinner. She can speak some English, and I talked with her, and asked 166if she was ever on the river at night. She nearly turned a somersault in the street trying to express her delight.”

We laughed, and Jack continued:

“Ye-us; be-u-tiful! be-u-tiful!” she said, and then I told her we were going to-night with Miss Sophie.

“‘Oh!’ she almost screeched, and nearly turned another somersault, and ran toward home. She told him, of course, and he must meddle and dictate! Come on! I’m going, and so is Chance; it will be fun to see him run up and down.”

Here Katy interposed, suggesting that we take M. Seguin’s advice and stay at home. “He had some reason besides the cold,” she said. But Jack was determined, and began to call back the dog, who had started for home.

“Jack,” Katy said, and I never saw her so firm, “if Chance comes, I shall stay at home. Miss Sophie”—and her voice shook—“does not like him, nor anything pertaining to the Seguins. She was white as a corpse when Chance was at the door clamoring to get in. She is afraid of dogs.”

“That’s so!” Jack said. “She was like a piece of chalk. Chancey, you will have to go home, but you must send him,” he said, turning to me. “He won’t budge for me.”

167The dog had crouched at my feet, and was looking up earnestly at me as I stroked his head and bade him go home. He did not want to go, but I persisted until he started off very slowly, looking back occasionally, to see if he might not be recalled.

“If we had known,” I often said to myself afterward—“if we had only known, the events of that dreadful night might have been prevented.”

But we didn’t know, and we went forward blindly, our spirits rising as we joined the throng, all seemingly hurrying in the same direction—to the Neva.

Only those who have seen the Neva in the height of its glory can imagine the beauty of that night, when the frozen river was full of gayly costumed people, some skating, some driving, some gliding swiftly down the steep toboggans, others sitting in the little booths, looking on. Over all was the full moon, which, with the many lanterns and torches, made it nearly as light as day. We had seen nothing like it since we had been in the city, and Jack was wild with delight, as we hurried on to where Sophie was waiting for us at the foot of some stairs leading down to the river.

At first we did not see her, as she stood a little back in 168the shadow; but, at the sound of our voices, she came forward, wrapped in furs, with her cap drawn so closely over her face that only a very small part of it was visible. I noticed, too, that she had on eyeglasses, which I had seen her wear once or twice in the street, and which I thought very becoming to her. By way of explanation, she said to me that her eyes were so weak from the effects of her cold that she was wearing the glasses as a protection from the wind and the glare of light on the river. I remembered afterward, when many things came to me, that there were no signs of her cold in her voice, which was natural, but very low, as we walked side by side to one of the shelters, where we took a seat.

Her mother was a good deal upset, she said, with the visit of the gendarme looking for Ivan, while she herself was nervous to an extent she did not understand.

“That it should have happened before you humiliated us greatly,” she said. “You saw my father arrested; you saw them searching for Ivan. Fate seems to have drawn us together in a strange manner. You may see me arrested before you leave this accursed country.”

She laughed, but there was bitterness in the laugh, and her voice had a hard ring in it I had never heard before. I wanted to ask her if she knew of what her brother was suspected, and if she had any reason to think he was in the city; but a feeling of delicacy restrained me.

169

“And with her a big dog, jumping and leaping.”

171I spoke of the dinner with Madame Seguin, and she said:

“Yes, I know; and you ought to feel honored. Madame does not often entertain. She is proud and hard—harder than her son, whose vocation does not suit her.”

“Do you know why he took it up?” I asked, and she replied:

“Only by hearsay, which is not always reliable. I have heard that he was once a nihilist, or a sympathizer with them, and sought after by the police. To save himself, he left the ranks and became what he is. Just what he believes I do not know. He stands high with his employers as a faithful and competent officer. I think, too, that he means to be kind to the poor wretches who are so unfortunate as to be caught by him.”

I don’t know why I did it, but I told of the note sent me by Chance, asking me not to go out that night, it was so cold. With no apparent reason that I could see, Sophie was disturbed or annoyed.

“No colder to-night than to-morrow night,” she said. “How did he know of your intention, and did he know I was to be with you?”

172I told her of Jack’s interview with Zaidee, and I presumed he had said Sophie was to accompany us.

“Zaidee!” she repeated. “She hears everything and knows everything! She is madame’s right hand, picked from the street, as you may have heard. She is the brightest girl I have ever seen, with as many sides to her as the occasion seems to require, but at heart I believe she is an anarchist. She was born in a hotbed of them. Madame makes much of her—takes her to Monte Carlo, where she stands or sits by her mistress, watching the play, which she frequently directs, telling madame where to put her money and taking charge of it after it is gained. Sometimes madame plays recklessly, and loses, when Zaidee scolds her sharply; then she plays recklessly again, and wins, and Zaidee makes her quit and come home before she loses it all. All this, of course, is gossip; but, somehow, we have a good deal of it with regard to families like the Seguins, once in the swim, now hovering around the edge. Not Michel. I do not think he cares a sou for society. His mother does, but she is too old to get a foothold again, and does not like it.”

During this conversation Jack and Katy had been taking a spin on the skating track, and some gendarmes 173had passed us, looking a little curiously at us, as we sat by ourselves. One of these was Paul Strigoff.

“I detest him!” Sophie said. “He is cruel and feelingless,” and it seemed to me that she drew back into the shadow until the officers had gone by.

At this point Katy and Jack came back, flushed with the exercises, which Jack was eager to try again. But Katy was tired, and sat down between myself and Sophie, who took her hand, rubbing it and asking if she were cold.

“Oh, no; it was delightful,” Katy said. “I am only tired,” and I fancied that she leaned a little on Sophie, or that Sophie drew her to herself.

“I think it is time we went home,” Sophie said, at last. “There will be no more dukes or duchesses here to-night. You have seen all the notables you will see, and it must be nearly eleven. I told mother I would not stay late. She is very nervous if I am out of her sight.”

Jack protested that it was not late, and the sight too fine to lose. Sophie was firm.

“I think I must go,” she said, and was about to rise, when our attention was arrested by the sight of a girl, bareheaded, with her black hair streaming in the wind, as she came bounding across the ice, and with her a big 174dog, jumping and leaping, sometimes behind her, sometimes in front, but never very far from her. It was Zaidee, who came to my side, and took me by the arm.

“Zaidee!” I said, trying to shake her off. “What is it? Why are you here?”

She was breathing so heavily that at first she could not speak, and, when at last she did, it was in long-drawn gasps.

“I’ve come,” she began, “to—tell—you—tell her—tell him”—and she pointed to Sophie—“tell him—to—go—now! They are after him! Too late! They’ve got him!” she wailed, and dropped at my side, exhausted.

Sophie had understood, and I shall never forget the expression of her face when, from some unseen quarter, a man appeared in front of us, and, laying his hand on her shoulder, said: “Ivan Scholaskie, I have found you at last!”

She was still holding Katy’s hand, and clung to it as if in this frail girl there was some hope of help. She had thrown back the collar of her coat, revealing her face more fully, and, rising to her feet, stood up erect, and taller than I had ever seen her. She had played a desperate game, and lost, and was now every inch a man in word and gesture.

175“You have done a fine thing, Paul Strigoff! I congratulate you!” she said, with bitter scorn; “but I am sorry it should have occurred before these friends of mine,” and she turned toward me. I felt my strength leaving me for a moment, and I leaned on Zaidee for support.

Jack did not understand the gendarme’s words, but he did the action, and, with all his impulsive, American blood, sprang to the rescue.

“Let her go, I tell you! You don’t arrest girls, do you? Shame on you! Let her go! We know her well. She is our friend. She came with us from Paris.”

He held on to the officer’s arm with all his might, while Chance, who knew something was wrong, and that the feeling was against the gendarme, growled ominously, ready to spring, if told to do so. I think the gendarme was amused, or he would have walked off at once with his prisoner. As it was, he waited a few moments, while Sophie said to Jack: “No use, my boy! The game is up! I am not Sophie Scholaskie. I am Ivan, her brother!”

Then Katy, who still held Sophie’s hand, stood up, and, though she could not speak the gendarme’s language, nothing could have been more eloquent than her 176upturned face, on which the moonlight fell, bringing out all its outlines of beauty, while her blue eyes were full of tears and entreaty, as she looked steadily at the gendarme. She knew he could not understand her, but her lips framed the words, “Be merciful!”

She could not speak loud, and was obliged to whisper; but I heard it distinctly, and so did Sophie, who smiled upon the excited girl pleading for her. I was on my feet by this time, and felt Zaidee’s strong arm around me as I stood. I recognized the man whom I had encountered twice before, and I knew he recognized me.

There was a sneer on his face, as he said:

“Madame has brought with her two fine advocates for her friends. I wish I could do their bidding, but I cannot. The law must take its course, and Ivan Scholaskie has baffled us a long time.”

“Of what is he accused?” I asked; and Paul replied:

“A nihilist, steeped to the dregs, and plotting for the assassination of the present czar, just as the last one was assassinated.”

“Paul Strigoff,” and Sophie’s voice rang out with all the force of a strong, insulted man, “it is a lie! I am not a murderer! I know of no plot against the czar. If I did, I should try to stop it, even by giving information. 177I sympathize with the nihilists, but I did not come from Paris to meet them. I came to see my mother, and very foolishly went twice to one of the old haunts, in my proper guise as a man.”

This last she said to me, and continued:

“Tell my mother, please. Comfort her, if you can, and don’t feel too anxious about me. The fortress cannot hold me, nor Siberia keep me always. I shall escape—not at once, perhaps, but later on. They can prove nothing against me except sympathy. And now, one word of warning: Leave St. Petersburg! This is the second time you have been mixed up with the Scholaskies. A third time might be fatal. We are dangerous acquaintances. I am glad I have met you. I shall never forget it. Something tells me I shall see you again. Good-by!”

She still held Katy’s hand, and now she stooped and kissed her, just as she had done once before. It was a long, passionate kiss, which told me the truth, and made me shudder a little.

“Forgive me!” she said; “it will be something to remember in the days of banishment and loneliness to come.”

Katy did not resent it, and it seemed as if her quivering 178lips wished to return it; but they didn’t. Meanwhile, Chance had pushed himself up close to Sophie, who recoiled from him in terror.

“Did you set the dog on me?” she asked the officer, while I answered, quickly:

“No; he came with Zaidee, and she came to warn you. Don’t you remember?”

“Yes; I do now,” Sophie said; and, taking her hand from Katy, she reached it out to the peasant girl, down whose face tears were falling, and almost freezing as they fell.

“Thank you, Zaidee,” she said. “How did you know I was to be arrested?”

“Oh, I knows, and hears, and acts,” was Zaidee’s reply, while Sophie continued:

“Did M. Seguin know you were coming?”

Zaidee shook her head. “I tells no secrets,” she said. “Only monsieur did not want any of you to come to-night. He sent Chance to tell you.”

She looked at me, and I now understood the purport of the note, as did Sophie.

“Thank him for me,” she said to Zaidee; and then, as people were beginning to gather near us, and whisper her identity, and the officer was growing impatient, and 179muttering that she had talked quite long enough with those Americans, she said to him: “I am ready, but don’t escort me as a prisoner. I shall go quietly. I know there is no escape.”

She looked at us, with the most pitiful smile I ever saw on a human face; then walked away, with a firm step, by the officer’s side, while Chance, who had sniffed mischief in the atmosphere, set up a most unearthly howl, which went echoing across the river and was heard above the noise of a band not far away. It was Chance’s farewell, and Zaidee put her hand over his mouth, to keep it from being repeated.

“How did Paul know just where to find us?” I said to Zaidee.

She shrugged her shoulders, and replied:

“Somebody knew he was coming with you; not Monsieur Seguin; he had nothing to do with it. But his mother—eh! eh!” and she grated her little, sharp teeth. “They knew she was to be with the three Americans—madame, a young lady and a boy—and the young lady would probably wear a scarlet cloak and hood.”

“Oh, auntie, it was my cloak which betrayed her, and I’ll never wear it again!” Katy exclaimed; and, laying her head in my lap, she sobbed bitterly.

180Jack was growing cold, and standing first on one foot, then on the other, while Zaidee’s teeth were chattering, and she had taken off her apron and tied it around her head and ears. Chance was getting almost beyond control, with his low yelps of disapprobation. Many curious eyes were upon us, and I felt that we must leave.

“I will go with you to the hotel, and help lead her,” Zaidee said; and it was her strong arm which kept Katy up and moving until we reached the hotel, where she went into violent hysterics for half an hour, during which I found Zaidee of great service.

It was late before Zaidee left us, saying: “Old madame will look at the clock, and blow; but I’m used to it, and I’m not afraid. She can’t do without me. I’ll tell you if I hear things about him. Good-by!”

CHAPTER XIII. WHAT FOLLOWED.

The next day the hotel, which was full of guests of various nationalities, was humming with excitement. A man dressed in woman’s clothes had been arrested on the ice the previous night, and was lodged in the fortress, waiting examination. This was the first piece of gossip which came to my ears as I sat, with Jack, taking my breakfast at a small table a little apart from the others. Katy had a violent headache, and could not come down, and I was glad, as she thus escaped the scrutiny of the many eyes turned toward us as the talk flowed on in low tones, but not so low that I did not catch much of it.

The man arrested was Ivan Scholaskie, masquerading as his sister, and a noted nihilist and head of every plot which had been hatched in Russia for the last twenty years, one would suppose, to hear the remarks made in Russian, German and Italian, all of which I understood, but was glad Jack did not, especially when, in lowered tones and gestures, we were indicated as the Americans who had been with Ivan—three of them, they said, and 182one a young lady, who had fainted and been carried off the ice. Hurrying through my breakfast, I went to Katy, whose face was very white and whose eyes were red with weeping.

“We must do something to save him”, she said, while Jack reëchoed her words.

He was in a very defiant mood, and ready to fight the entire Russian Government, if necessary. But what could we do? I thought of M. Seguin, whose influence was great. But he had once searched for Ivan himself. There could be no help from that quarter, and I sat down by Katy, trying to soothe her, and ascertain why she was so unstrung, and whether it were possible that in her heart there had been born a feeling for Ivan different from what she had felt for Sophie. But she was noncommittal on that point.

“She never seemed quite like a woman,” she said, “and the night we were at her mother’s and the officer was looking for Ivan, something told me he was sitting by me, and I nearly fell off my chair. Then I rallied, and tried to think I was mistaken; but, when she kissed me in the dressing room, I was sure she was a man. No girl ever kissed me like that. Oh—oh!” and she burst into a 183paroxysm of tears, while Jack walked the room, raging like a young lion, and declaring he’d do something!

There was nothing we could do, except to see the poor mother, and this fell to me. She had heard of the arrest, and was very glad to see me.

“The girl Zaidee came here on her way home,” she said, “knowing I would be very anxious when Sophie did not come. She gave me her account; perhaps yours is different.”

I told her all I could recall, and tried to comfort her. But she shook her head sadly.

“There is no bright spot,” she said, “and I must bear it. They have wanted Ivan for a long time. He is shrewd and eloquent, and makes stirring speeches. I don’t know of anything worse. But, when once they suspect a person, there is little hope, for every act, every movement, is exaggerated. You are kind to come here, but you must not stay. I, too, am a suspect, though Heaven only knows why! When Ivan’s father was banished, he took an oath that he would do what he could to help the nihilists. He was only twenty-one—a rash boy, with his father’s love for secrecy and adventure and hate of the government. He is short for a man, with a 184fair, smooth face, on which he could never make a beard grow. He was in England at school two years, with his sister Sophie, and conceived the idea there of personating her, which he did to perfection, and he has often eluded the police in that guise. He has been in Paris two years, at the Bon Marché. Sophie is in Paris, too. I wanted to see him, and he wanted to see me. He is a great mother’s boy, and he came, choosing a woman’s dress partly for safety and partly because the excitement pleased him. His own hair is light and rather thin. The hair you saw was a wig, made in Paris, and so natural that it could not be detected. He is very popular, and has many friends. Some met him at the frontier, others at the station here, and they have called on him in greater crowds than I liked. I was always dreading some evil, and now it has come. If he had kept in Sophie’s clothes, the evil might have been averted, but he would go to their meetings in his own dress, and this is the result. The night you were here, and Michel Seguin came, I felt my life strings snap, for I was nearly sure he knew it was Ivan, and refrained from arresting him for your sake. He can be very stern on occasion, but is also kind. He was kind to my husband, and will be to Ivan, if he is sent to Siberia, as is probable. I shall follow him in 185time, and die there. When I can, I will write you, if you will leave me your address.”

I gave it to her, and asked if there was anything more I could do.

“Yes,” she said; “bring me your niece. I can tell you in confidence, Ivan was very fond of her. From the moment he saw her, she took so strong a hold of him that he could think of little else. ‘If I were an American, I’d try to win her,’ he often said; and, as it was, he thought of going to America, and becoming one of its citizens, hoping this might help his cause. Poor Ivan! My dear boy! All his hopes blasted! Nothing but Siberia now!”

She didn’t cry—she couldn’t—but her face quivered, and her red eyes had in them a look I did not like. The next day I took Katy to see her, and found her with the same drawn expression on her face; but it relaxed at sight of Katy, and it seemed to me there was a faint moisture in her tired, sunken eyes. Katy saw it, and with her soft hand she closed the lids gently, and saying to the poor woman: “Try to cry; it will do you good.”

I watched the process anxiously, and was delighted, at last, to see a great tear force its way under the lids and roll down her cheek. It was succeeded by another and 186another, until they fell like rain, amid moans and gasps, as if crying gave her pain.

“I believe you have saved my life,” she said, when the paroxysm had subsided. “I had not cried before since they took my husband away, and there was a pressure like fire in my head and eyes.”

She did seem better, and at last fell asleep, with Katy smoothing her white hair and forehead.

That night M. Seguin called, seeming at first under some restraint, as if he had lost favor with us. He did not mention Ivan until I asked where he was, and what would probably be his fate.

“Siberia, undoubtedly; but not for a long time, as they can find nothing criminal against him,” he said. “He is an agitator—a stirrer-up. He kept the thing simmering wherever he went. A very fine fellow, but a dangerous man, with his principles and pleasing personality. We had to arrest him to keep him out of mischief. I am sorry that you were present at the arrest.”

I think he said all this on Katy’s account, but she made no comment. There were two red spots on her cheeks, and her eyes were unnaturally bright, as she listened to him.

“Since you have been so intimate with Ivan, and came 187from Paris with him, you will probably be questioned as to what you know of his movements,” Michel said to us.

“Oh, no!” Katy gasped, and the red on her cheeks faded to a deadly pallor. “I can’t be questioned. I have done enough. My scarlet cloak betrayed him.”

Michel looked pityingly at her, as he tried to reassure her by saying the examination would be a mere formality and she had nothing to dread. He did not stay long after this, but before he went he told us his mother was soon going to Monte Carlo, and would take Zaidee with her. “She is very fond of Monte Carlo, and very successful, as a rule—or Zaidee is. I am told she frequently tells my mother where to put her money, and mother listens to her as she never listens to anyone else. You did a good thing when you gave your hat to that girl! She has it yet, and wears it sometimes, I believe; at least, I occasionally see her with a most wonderful headgear.”

After he was gone Katy began to cry. She dreaded the ordeal that lay before her, should we be questioned with regard to our acquaintance with Ivan. Jack rather anticipated it.

“All you have to do is to tell the truth, the whole truth, 188and nothing but the truth,” he said, adding, with a boy’s bravado, “but I shall do more. I shall tell ’em what I think of ’em. I’ve wanted a chance at ’em.”

The next day he had his chance, and we were questioned separately and individually with regard to our connection with the Scholaskies, and, as each told the same story, without any variation, we were believed, and not molested as partisans. I heard that Jack called the officials fools, and said some very uncomplimentary things of the Russian Government, and when the officers laughed, and called him a silly boy to fall in love with a man, he called them liars, and, when one of them threatened him for contempt, he told them to do their worst, if they wanted his father about their ears, with the U. S. A. and a war ship and the President, and a lot more.

M. Seguin was present, acting as interpreter, and softening a good deal that Jack said, but the officers knew he was a reckless boy, and were more amused than angry. Poor little Katy was white as a sheet at first, but, gathering courage as the examination proceeded, told what she knew in a straightforward way, and then, with streaming eyes, pleaded for Ivan, that his punishment might be of the mildest form. She was not taunted with being in love, as Jack had been, but was treated with a 189kindness and deference one would hardly expect from those grim Russians. Try as we might, we could hear nothing definite of Ivan, until Zaidee brought us the news that he was to go to Siberia for three or four years, and his mother would follow him as soon as she was able.

“I’d go, too, and see to ’em, if I didn’t have to look after old Madame Seguin, and keep her from drinking too much,” she said, with a queer grimace. “She is very fond of wine, and would get as drunk as a fool if I did not stop her. I touch her arm, and she knows what I mean. That’s why I stand behind her, and, when I think she has had enough, I go for her. At Monte Carlo she gets so excited that she don’t know anything, and I have to tell her to put up the money she has won, and when to put it down. She’s a queer one.”

For Michel she had only words of praise. “A splendid man that! No one need be afraid of him, except they are bad,” she said, forgetting the time when, a poor street waif, she used to run at the sight of him.

We tried to see Ivan, but that was impossible. We could only send him a message and a good-by through Michel Seguin, who promised to do for him all he consistently could do.

190“Perhaps he may write to you,” he said, looking at Katy, who had been like a wilted flower ever since the arrest, caring for nothing, except to leave the city as soon as possible. She went once alone to call on Madame Scholaskie, and when she returned she seemed much happier. Madame had promised to write, if Ivan could not, and sundry messages, I was sure, were given to his mother for him.

Two days later we left St. Petersburg, with only M. Seguin at the station to say good-by. He was there officially, and was looking tired and worn, I thought, and sorry that we were leaving. As I stood by him for a moment, when no one was near, I said: “Do you think Nicol Patoff is in Siberia?”

“I know he isn’t,” he replied, and I continued: “It is very strange that he should disappear so absolutely and for so long a time.”

“Yes, very strange!” he said; and I went on: “When you do hear from him, whether for good or bad, will you let me know?”

“Certainly,” he said; and added: “You have not forgotten him, I see.”

“No,” I answered. “I shall never forget him. If I have said less of him during this visit to your city, it is 191because so many exciting things have taken place. You remember the messages I gave you for him?”

“Yes!”

“You will give them to him?”

“Yes; and shall I tell him that, if he were a free man among men, you might possibly listen to his suit, if he cared to press it?”

“No—oh, no!” I said, quickly, feeling as I never had before that Nicol’s place had been taken by the man before me, and between whom and myself there could never be anything but friendship.

“I am sorry for Nicol,” he said; “and now you must go; but you will come again?”

I nodded negatively, as I gave him my hand, which he held till the last moment; and I felt his warm clasp long after our train had left the city and we were plunging into the snow and ice which lined our way to the frontier. As we crossed it and shook off the Russian soil or snow from our feet, I said, “Thank God!” with more fervency than I had done before when I left the country behind me.

In his journal, at our first stopping place, Jack wrote: “Thank the Lord, we are out of Russia, and can sneeze, if we want to. I have had a jolly time, too. An adventure 192with a real nihilist, and seen him arrested. I always said she had big feet and hands. But she was game, and I liked her. I don’t understand Katy, unless she was in love with him. She says she suspected it was Ivan, and not Sophie, that night at Mme. Scholaskie’s. Well, I had a squabble with some gendarmes, and told ’em what I thought of ’em, and I guess I just missed Siberia. I ought to be satisfied with my Russian trip, and I am, and don’t care to repeat it; but what a lot I shall have to tell when I get home!”

CHAPTER XIV. LETTERS.

From St. Petersburg we went to Italy for the rest of the winter; and April found us again in Paris, at our old quarters, the Bellevue. As soon as we were settled, we looked up Sophie Scholaskie, whom we found up three long flights of stairs, in a very pretty little apartment, where she lived alone, with a woman to come morning and night to see to her rooms. She was a very handsome young woman, and so much like Ivan that I did not wonder he could pass for her so easily. She was delighted to see us, especially Katy, in whom she seemed to feel she had a particular right of ownership, and whom she scrutinized very closely all the time we were with her, and kissed at parting, saying, “For Ivan’s sake!”

She talked a great deal, but in a pleasant, ladylike way, asking many questions about her mother and Ivan. She had tried to keep him from going to St. Petersburg, she said, knowing how hot-headed he was when among his own friends. But nothing could deter him, and Siberia 194was the result. He had been there some time. Indeed, she believed he had started on his northern journey the day we left the city. He had been treated with a good deal of kindness, thanks to Michel Seguin, who had used his influence all along the line. Did we know Michel?

The color in my face was a sufficient reply, and she went on: “Of course you do. I remember hearing of the American lady whom he would marry, if she were willing and it were not for his termagant old mother.”

“No!” I exclaimed. “M. Seguin neither wants me nor I him. We are friends; that’s all, and his mother need have no fear of me.”

Sophie laughed, and replied: “It would be good, pious work to live with her, I think. She is here now, at the Grand Hotel, with her maid, spending what she won at Monte Carlo. Perhaps you’d like to call upon her? This is her day.”

“Never!” I answered, quickly, with a vivid remembrance of her manner toward me the night I dined with her.

I had had enough of Madame Seguin, but did not express myself to Sophie, who spoke next of her grandmother, who lived in London.

195“I think old ladies all get queer,” she said, “and grandma is the queerest of all, but I want you to call upon her. In fact, she expects you. She is half English, you know. Her mother was a Londoner, but her father was a Russian. She may amuse you.”

I was not in a very good mood to be amused, but I took Madame Reynaud’s address, and promised to call, if I had time, and the next day we left Paris. There was some misunderstanding with regard to our passage, which we had thought secured, and we were obliged to stay in London several days.

As time hung rather heavily upon our hands, I suggested one afternoon that we call on Madame Reynaud, and see what she was like. We found her in a fine apartment on Piccadilly, near Hyde Park, and attended by a butler, cook and maid. She was a little, wizened-up, old woman, painted and powdered, with many rings on her shriveled hands and large solitaires in her ears. She received us with a great deal of ceremony, and ordered tea at once. She had heard of us from her daughter and from Sophie, whom she supposed we had seen at her treadmill work, she said. Then began a tirade against Sophie for earning her own living, “teaching every kind of brat, when she might live with me, and be something 196besides a breadwinner. I see a good deal of society, for there is blue blood in my veins, English as well as Russian, and I am as proud of the one as of the other.”

I thought I should greatly prefer Sophie’s life to one with that blue-blooded woman. She took up Ivan next, but not until she had nearly thrown Katy into hysterics by saying, in a very brusque way: “And this is the little girl Ivan fancied when masquerading as Sophie? And did you fancy him?”

“Madame,” Katy replied, with great dignity, “I liked your grandson, as Sophie, very much. I have never known him as Ivan.”

“Well put—well put!” and madame laughed, with a kind of cackle, which I detested.

“You’d better never know him as Ivan,” she continued. “I’ve warned him what he’d come to, and he has come to it. I have no patience with a nihilist, or anarchist, or striker of any kind. They deserve Siberia, or something worse, and I’m glad Ivan has his deserts at last—masquerading in petticoats! Yes, he has his deserts. It’s the Scholaskie blood, not mine—not the Rubenstein on the Russian side, nor the Burnells on the English. I’m proud of both. And my daughter is going to join her scapegrace son? Well, let her; her husband 197died there. He played the rôle of a beggar, and was caught; Ivan played the fine lady, and was caught—served ’em right—served ’em right! I would not turn my hand to save him. Have some more tea?”

She spoke to me, but I declined. She suggested that I should drive with her in the park, but I was anxious to get away from the dreadful old woman. As we were leaving, she put her hand on Katy’s shoulder, and said: “You are a bonnie little lassie, as the Scotch say, and, if Ivan were not such a fool, and you were not an American, I think it would do, and I should know where to leave my diamonds. I lie awake nights thinking about it. There is no one but Ivan’s wife and Sophie, and diamonds would be out of place on her, as a music teacher. They are worth having, eh?”

She touched the large pendants in her ears, and held up both her hands, on which seven rings were sparkling. Katy made no reply; she was as anxious to leave the house as I was, and we both breathed more freely when out in the open air in the bustle of Piccadilly.

A few days later we sailed for home, and, as my brother’s house in Washington was rented for the year, Jack and Katy came with me to Ridgefield, where Jack found ample scope for his talent in narrating to the boys 198of the place his adventures in Russia. Katy was very reticent. Something had come over her spirits, and for hours she would sit silent, with a look on her face as if her thoughts were far away. Once I spoke of Ivan, when there came a look of intense pain on her face, and she said: “Don’t, auntie. I can’t bear it. To think we are so happy here, and so free, and he is a prisoner in Siberia, doing I don’t know what—working in a chain gang, maybe.”

I disabused her mind of that idea, and a few days later there came to me a letter, worn and soiled, as if it had been long on the way and had passed through many hands. It was from Ivan, who was in Southern Siberia, and his mother was with him. He was happier, he wrote, than he had thought it possible for him to be as an exile and prisoner. He had met his fate, and it was not as bad as he had expected. Southern Siberia was not like the dreary north. He was a prisoner, it was true, and under surveillance, but he scarcely felt it, as he had nothing to conceal, and since his mother joined him he was tolerably content. He had heard of Jack’s daring defense and Katy’s earnest appeal for him, and thanked them for it.

Then he spoke of Katy particularly, saying:

199“Under my woman’s dress a man’s heart was beating, and I was not insensible to the loveliness of your niece. She attracted me the moment I saw her in the train, and the attraction grew until I think I was as much in love with her as a man ever is with a pure, innocent girl, and my love was intensified from the fact that I had to conceal its nature. It was not Sophie who kissed her, but Ivan, the man who longed to take her in his arms, and who sees her now shrinking from me as if she half divined the truth. Did she, I wonder, and is there in her heart anything which responds to my love? I am a Russian, but I can live in America, and conform to American customs. I am a prisoner, but that does not count. There are many men here who stood higher in the social world than I did. Four years—the term for which I am banished—pass quickly, and, when I am free, I shall come to America, if Katy gives me the least encouragement to do so. She may not care to write to me, as other eyes than mine would see her letter, but tell her to write to mother a friendly letter, making no mention of what I have written. I shall take it as an answer in the affirmative, and nothing in Siberia can trouble me again. By the way, you have some old friends here—Ursula and her nephew, Carl, who, I imagine, is naturally a hard ticket. But he is doing his best as a farmer, and will be quite a respected citizen in time. Mother joins me in love to you all, and says tell you that old Drusa 200is with us, and we are not very unhappy. She knows what I have written, and will look anxiously for Katy’s letter. God bless you all!

“I heard, from Sophie, that you called on my grandmother in London, and that she gave you her opinion of myself quite freely. She is a holy terror!”

This letter Katy read several times, but it was some days before I spoke of it to her, and asked if she intended writing to Madame Scholaskie. For some moments she made no reply, and when, at last, she did, her voice was very low and her face flushed, as if she were ashamed.

“To write to madame will be encouraging Ivan, and I don’t know as I ought to do that, I have such peculiar feelings with regard to him. I loved Sophie as I have never loved any other girl, and yet there was always something queer about it; and, when I knew she was Ivan, I recoiled from her for a while. I have never known Ivan as a man; never seen him in a man’s clothes. If I had, I should know better what to do. I must think.”

She took a week to think, and then one day surprised me with a letter she had written to Madame Scholaskie. It was very short, very commonplace, I thought, and had 201in it no mention of Ivan, except at the last, when she wrote:

“Please remember us all to your son. We are glad he finds Siberia endurable.”

I thought it very cold, but it was a letter, and would answer Ivan’s question. For three days it lay upon the library table, directed and stamped, and then one morning I missed it as I came to breakfast after the postman’s call, and Katy said to me: “I have committed myself. The letter has gone, but may never reach its destination.”

Weeks passed, and months, and no answer came to Katy’s letter. Her face wore a look of disappointment, but she never mentioned Russia voluntarily. Jack, on the contrary, was never tired of airing his exploits, and telling of Ivan’s arrest in a woman’s clothes, and what he said to the gendarme in Ivan’s defense; and, when these topics failed, Chance was a fertile theme. Unknown to any of us, he wrote to M. Seguin, and received an answer, written, I think, as much for my benefit as for Jack’s. There was a long account of Chance and his doings, which pleased Jack.

“You will, of course, show this letter to your aunt,” 202Michel wrote, “and tell her she is not forgotten, and that I have only to mention her name to Chance, telling him to find her, when he springs up, racing all over the house, and, if the door is open, rushing into the street, in his mad search for her; and, when he fails, he comes back and puts his head in my lap, with a sorry, human look in his eyes, as if asking where she is, and why she does not come. I ask that, too, sometimes. I am very lonely now, as mother is in Monte Carlo, with Zaidee, who is growing to be a tall girl, quite unlike the frowzy head to whom your aunt gave her hat. That hat is still in existence, hanging in Zaidee’s room, in place of an icon, I verily believe. The girl says she does not believe in icons. She believes in the religion of the United States, and when I asked her which one, telling her there were many creeds and isms there, she promptly answered: ‘Miss Harding’s religion, of course.’

203

“She was a little, wizened-up old woman, painted and powdered.”

205“I have heard of Ivan—that he is doing well and feeling well. His sister has been to St. Petersburg to dispose of the furniture of the house. Some of it she sold, some was rented with the house, and some she stored, in case her mother should return, which is doubtful, as she is very feeble. Tell your aunt that I bought the square table at which she was playing cards when I came looking for Ivan. I hardly know why I bought it, when our house is full of tables, but I did, and it has a place in what I call my den. Tell her, too, that I am writing on Nicol Patoff’s desk, and that I know no more of him now than when she was here. Your sister was a beautiful little girl. Give her my love, if she cares to take it from an old man like me. And give it to your auntie, too. I always think of her as a girl, she looks so young. Tell her that the old drosky man, who, the winter she was here, was keeping his bones warm in his mud hut on the plains, has come back, with a new establishment and new horse, and loudly laments that he did not have the pleasure of driving little madame. He thinks he lost a great deal—not so much in kopecks as in honor. He took Zaidee out one day, rather against his will, as he remembered the touzle-haired girl who had your aunt’s hat, and hardly thought it fit that she should ride in his new drosky, even if she is transformed into a fine-looking girl, with a tongue in her head, he said, and a devil in her eyes! He nearly upset her, he drove so fast, and she was glad to escape with whole bones. Zaidee is what you call a case—a rank nihilist at heart, I believe, but she covers it so well that mother does not suspect. If she did, she would not tolerate the girl a moment. She is death on anarchy of any kind.”

There was more in the same strain, and Jack did not think much of the letter as a whole. It was more for me, he said, than for himself, and I’d better answer it. But I didn’t, and time went on, and Russia seemed to me 206far in the past, and as something I should never see again, when, in the summer two years after our winter’s experience, I was there again, the companion, or guest, of a lady who took me with her because I could speak the difficult language. There was no Sophie Scholaskie with us this time—no M. Seguin at the frontier. Instead, there were plenty of officials, rather brusque and rough, as they examined our baggage and passports and scrutinized me curiously, as if they had seen me before, and wondered why I was there so often. I wondered, too, before the long, dreary journey came to an end, and St. Petersburg, with its gilded dome and spires and palaces, loomed into sight. Then I began to feel at home, for I knew nearly every foot of the great city, and I recognized some of the officials whom I had seen before. The hotel did not suit my friend, who wished for a more quiet place, and, after a few inquiries, we found it by a strange chance in the very house where the Scholaskies had lived, and where M. Seguin had come searching for Ivan.

CHAPTER XV. MRS. BROWNE.

It was a boarding house, kept by a Mrs. Browne, an English woman, who had seen better days, as she constantly reminded her boarders, whom she preferred to call guests. She was particular to impress upon her guests that she spelled her name with a final “e.” That was more aristocratic! Many of her boarders were away, and for this reason, perhaps, I was offered as a sitting room the one where madame had received us and we had played whist with Sophie. I could almost have sworn that some of the furniture was the same, especially the chair in which madame had sat, clutching the arms so tightly, with a look of terror on her face which I could see so plainly, and a kind of creepy feeling came over me, as if the place were haunted.

“Yes, this is very nice,” I said; “but have you no other rooms I can look at?”

Mrs. Browne was a woman with a square jaw, and it fell at once, as she repeated, “Other rooms? Yes; but the likes of you don’t want them. Ain’t you an American, 208and don’t they always want the best? What ails the room? It has been occupied by nobility!”

I saw that she must be conciliated, and hastened to assure her that the room was all that could be desired by nobility or Americans.

“In Heaven’s name! what’s the matter, then?” she asked; and I replied that to me it seemed haunted by the people whom I once knew.

Her shriek might have been heard on the Nevsky, as she fell against an old serving woman, who was just entering the room, and kept her mistress from falling.

“Haunted? Explain! What do you mean? What do you know of the people who once lived here? I was told by the proprietor, of whom I rented it a year ago, that it was perfectly respectable every way. There isn’t a more first-class house in St. Petersburg. Do you think I would have anything that was not first-class—I, who wasn’t brought up to keep boarders?”

“Of course not,” I said, taking a chair and removing my hat, for the day was very warm.

The woman’s manner was so offensive that I resolved to tell her the truth about her first-class house, and was rather anxious to see the effect, especially as her first question to us, after learning that we were Americans, 209was to ask if we sympathized with the anarchists, of whom America was full, and who were always killing a President or somebody, just like the nihilists. She detested them, she said, and would not have one in her house, if she knew it. She did have one, as she found after he had left, and she burned sulphur candles in his room for two days, to remove the taint. Her servants were all loyal to the government, such as it was. She thought it might be improved, but it was the duty of its citizens to stand by it. All this she had said, and more, and I was wondering if she knew that nihilists had occupied her house, and were now in Siberia.

“Did you ever hear of the Scholaskies?” I asked, when I could get in a word.

“Scholaskies?” she repeated. “The name sounds familiar. Alex!” and she turned to the old woman, against whom she was still propped, and who seemed to be her prime factor. “Alex,” she screamed, saying, apologetically to us, “She is deaf as a post,” “Alex, did you ever hear of the Scholaskies?”

The old woman shook her head, and Mrs. Browne continued, in Russian, which she had no idea I understood: “This American woman speaks as if the Scholaskies 210had something to do with this house—this room. Think hard!”

The old woman looked at my friend, Mrs. Whitney, and myself curiously, as if we were some rare specimens, while she seemed to be thinking, and her tan-colored face wrinkled up into folds; then she shook her head again, and Mrs. Browne said to me: “Alex never heard of them; but, then, she has only been a year here from Moscow, have you, Alex?”

Alex didn’t answer, and the question was screamed into her ear.

“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 211as 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 212fanning 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.

“Dreadful! Horrible!” she exclaimed. “Didn’t you die with fright and shame?”

“Oh, no,” I replied. “I was shocked and astonished, but not ashamed. I would have saved Ivan, if I could.”

213“You would!” she exclaimed. “Are you a nihilist, or an anarchist?”

“Neither,” I answered her. “Ivan was my friend, and I was sorry for him—a young man in his prime, to be banished from all that made life worth living for. But suppose we come to business about the rooms? I’ve told you why they seemed haunted, but sitting here as long as I have, that feeling has vanished, and I rather think I’d like them, for the sake of old times, if my friend is agreeable,” and I turned to Mrs. Whitney, a frail little body, who had been an amused listener to the conversation, and who left everything to me.

She was quite willing, she said, but what was it about giving up the lease because the house had been contaminated by nihilists? She would not like to get settled and then have to move.

Mrs. Browne was taken by surprise. She had made a good bargain with the landlord. The house was well situated for boarders. Those she had had in the last winter were to return the coming winter. She could not afford to throw up the lease, as half her rent was paid in advance. This she explained, and added: “I’m in a tight place.”

I think it is in my nature to give advice, whether asked 214for or not, and I said to her: “If you burned sulphur candles two days for one nihilist, burn them eight days for four—Monsieur and Madame Scholaskie, Ivan and Sophie. That, surely, would clear the atmosphere.”

I felt nearly certain that I heard a chuckle from Alex, who was wiping a window, but, as her bad ear was toward me, I might have been mistaken. For a moment Mrs. Browne’s gray eyes shone angrily; then she laughed, and said: “It is so long since those people were here that I think I’ll risk the house without the candles. Will you take the rooms?”

She was coming to business, which was settled at once, although I thought her price rather exorbitant, but Mrs. Whitney paid the bills without a murmur. Indeed, I don’t know that I should have dared protest, under any circumstances. I was somewhat cowed by Mrs. Browne, with her blue blood and the “e” at the end of her name. She was a wiry little woman, with a tongue; and, after we had agreed upon the rooms—to her evident satisfaction and surprise that we had not tried to beat her down—she began very volubly to descant upon the great privileges we enjoyed as her guests—the best the market could produce, the cleanest house and most attentive servants, especially Alex, whose virtues she began again to extol. Incidentally, she called our attention to the fact that Alex never went out but once a week, and not always that.

215

“Fanning her with the feather duster she had been using, the effect of which was to make the lady sneeze vigorously.”

217“To-night happens to be her evening out,” she said. “Where she goes I don’t know. She is never late, and when she comes in she takes off her shoes, so as not to make a noise. She will not disturb you. Come, Alex, you have dusted this room enough.”

With a bow, she left us, followed by Alex, who was a little lame, and limped as she walked.

“Broke her leg at hard work, and it was not set right,” Mrs. Browne explained, as she saw us looking after her. “Poor thing, she has been through fire and water, but is strong as an ox. Can pick me up as if I were a little child. Good-morning!”

I was glad when she was gone, with her enumeration of Alex’s virtues. I had taken a prejudice against the old woman, and believed she could hear more than she pretended. That afternoon we moved into our new quarters, and took our first dinner with Mrs. Browne. Everything was homelike, well cooked and well served. The linen was spotless, the china pretty, and the silver real—as Mrs. Browne took pains to inform us, saying she would have no shams about her house, if she knew it.

218That night was warm and bright, with a full moon, but I could not sleep for the thoughts crowding so fast upon my brain. Where were Madame Scholaskie and Ivan? And where was Michel Seguin, and should I see him again? I would not ask Mrs. Browne if she knew anything of him. I would wait and let him find me. Attracted by the beauty of the night, I arose at last and went to a window, where I stood looking out, when, just as a clock struck twelve, I saw Alex stealing softly up to the house, and taking off her shoes, as her mistress had said.

“She is not a very early bird, with all her virtues,” I thought; but I heard no sound as she entered the house; and, going to bed, I fell asleep at last, and dreamed of M. Seguin and his dog.

CHAPTER XVI. MADAME’S DEATH.

The next day I went for a drive with Mrs. Whitney along the Court Quay and the Nevsky Prospect, and past the Seguin house, which had an air of being shut up. The old porter was, however, at his post, and in the third story a window was open, and a bird cage standing in it, with a bird straining his little throat with his song, while near him was a vase of flowers.

“Somebody is home,” I thought. “Zaidee, probably, and that is her room. If so, she will find me.”

Then I wondered if Chance was there, and, like a foolish young schoolgirl, I called his name twice as we passed the house. There was an answering roar from some quarter—a rush of feet and a tussle with the porter, whose voice was very high, mingled with another, which I recognized as Zaidee’s, and then, when we were some distance from the house, the dog broke away and came rushing after us, with barks of delight. He had recognized my voice, and was in hot pursuit. I knew it would not do for him to overtake us, as I didn’t know what he 220might do in his excitement, and Mrs. Whitney was afraid of dogs.

“Drive fast, and don’t let him overtake us,” I said to the coachman, who had turned his head, and needed no second bidding to hurry, so that it was now a race between the horse and the dog, and the horse beat, for it seemed to dawn on Chance that he was doing a ridiculous thing, and he began to slacken his speed, while Zaidee came running, bareheaded and bare-armed, along the Nevsky till she reached the animal, and, seizing him by the mane, led him back to the house.

I knew then that Zaidee would find us very soon; nor was I mistaken, for that evening, as it began to grow dark, Mrs. Browne appeared at my door, saying there was a young person who wished to see me.

“I think she is some lady’s maid, or upper servant,” she said. “I thought she might have some message, and asked her, but she said no; she came to see Miss Harding—that you were her friend. She is in the kitchen. Will you see her there?”

“It’s Zaidee,” I said. “I’m sure it’s Zaidee. Bring her in here.”

“Here in your sitting room?” Mrs. Browne asked, with a look of surprise; and I knew that, with her blue blood 221and the “e” at the end of her name, she did not approve of what she probably attributed to American democracy. “Well, if you say so,” she said, and in a moment Zaidee came in, taller than when I last saw her, and improved in every way.

There was still a pleasant air about her, but there was also an air as if she had lived with cultivated people, and profited by it. She was in mourning for some friend, and my heart gave a great thump with fear of what she might tell me. In her hand were the flowers I had seen, in a window of the Seguin house.

“I brought these to you,” she said, putting them into a vase which stood on a small table in the center of the room.

She was very quick and handy in what she did, and, I could understand why Madame Seguin liked her so much. I was about to ask her some questions, after thanking her for the flowers, when there came upon the door the same pounding and scratching and whining I had heard twice before.

“Chance!” I exclaimed. “He came with you. Let him in. I must see him!”

I thought Zaidee looked frightened, as she cast hurried glances around the room.

222“Chance! The wretch!” she said. “I didn’t know he followed me. I must send him home.”

“No; let him in,” I insisted.

Mrs. Browne now appeared, armed with a cane and looking very scared.

“There’s a brute of a dog as big as a cow pounding at the door enough to tear it down. Did you bring him? If so, send him home at once. I will not have him here,” she said to Zaidee.

“But, Mrs. Browne,” I interposed, “he is an old friend of mine, and harmless as a kitten. He has come to see me.”

The pounding and pawing was very loud by this time. Chance was in earnest. He had heard my voice, and he meant to come in. Opening the door just a crack, Mrs. Browne stood behind it, out of harm’s way, while, with a bound, Chance was in the room, making the circuit of it first, and with his bushy tail knocking over a chair and upsetting the little table, which went down with a crash, taking with it the vase of flowers, which rolled on the carpet, while the water followed in little puddles.

Having paid his respects to the room, Chance turned to me, and, putting both paws on my shoulders, looked me steadily in the face a moment, then dropped his head 223on my neck, with a satisfied bark. Mrs. Browne was in the midst of the débris, with her cane upraised to strike the dog; but, when she saw him with his paws around my neck, her jaw dropped, and her cane dropped with it.

“Well, if that don’t beat anything!” she said. “Ain’t you afraid of him?”

“Afraid! No,” I answered, putting his paws from me, but keeping my hand on his mane, as I thought I saw in him signs of another circuit around the room.

“Where’s Alex? She must clear up this litter,” Mrs. Browne said, and Zaidee answered, quickly: “Don’t call her, nor anyone. I can do it.”

But Mrs. Browne was bent upon having Alex, and went in quest of her, while Zaidee stopped in her work of picking up the flowers and bits of the vase and laid her hand very firmly on Chance’s collar. Why, I did not then know. He was quiet enough with me, but Zaidee held him with a strong grip until Mrs. Browne came back with another maid, whom she ordered to wipe up the water and remove the table, a leg of which had fallen out. I had a suspicion that it was just ready to fall, for it had swayed a little when I placed it in the center of the room for the lamp, which, fortunately, had not been put upon it.

224“Alex has gone to bed, with a bad headache, and I told her to stay there, poor thing,” Mrs. Browne said, and instantly Zaidee’s hand relaxed its hold on Chance’s collar, and she seemed relieved as she dropped into a chair.

“Whose brute is this?” Mrs. Browne inquired; and Zaidee replied: “Monsieur Seguin’s. You’ve heard of the Seguins, on the Nevsky?”

Mrs. Browne shook her head. The Seguins were as strange to her as the Scholaskies.

“Are they nihilists?” she asked, sharply; and I replied: “No, indeed! Madame Seguin is as bitter against them as you are, and her son is a gendarme.”

“Oh!” she said. “And he owns this beast? Seems to me I have heard of him. He can track anybody, if he has once known them and smelled their clothes or hands? He seems very fond of you.”

“Yes,” I answered; “I believe he’d do anything I told him to do, even fly at you!”

“Oh, good Lord!” and she threw up both her hands, and, picking up her cane, left, as I hoped she would, for I wished to be alone with Zaidee.

Mrs. Whitney, who was not strong, and very nervous, had gone to her room at the first sound of Chance at the door, and so I had the girl to myself as soon as the maid 225had wiped the floor and left the room, with a look at Zaidee which made me think they were not strangers.

“How did you know I was here?” I asked, when we were alone.

“Alex told me. I met her last night,” was her answer.

“Do you know Alex?” I asked, in some surprise.

“Slightly,” replied Zaidee. “Everybody does who ever saw her once, she looks so queer; but she is a good old woman. And then, you know, you called Chance when you were opposite our house. I saw you, and we had a great tussle with the dog—the porter and I—to keep him in. The porter fell down, and swore so hard and I laughed so that Chance got away and followed you. I did not mean to have him come with me to-night, and didn’t know he had till I heard him at the door. He is hard to manage when his master is away. He is in Moscow, and the house is like a tomb without him.”

I was conscious of a feeling of happiness in knowing that Zaidee’s black was not worn for Michel, and my next question was for Madame Seguin.

“Dead and buried,” was the response, while Zaidee tried to look sorry.

“Dead!” I repeated. “When did she die?”

“Last winter, at Monte Carlo. We went there early 226in November,” Zaidee said, beginning her story, and surprising me with the good language she used.

Madame had certainly taken a great deal of pains to teach her, and Zaidee had been quick to learn.

“Madame was in her usual good spirits,” she said, “and in a hurry to get to Monte Carlo. She played every night, in the same place, at the same table, and lost at first; then she began to win, and played so high that I was frightened, and tried to stop her.

“‘Let me be,’ she said. ‘My good angel is helping me,’ and I guess he was, or something else, she had such luck, and won more than she had ever done before. Then she began to lose, and, when I asked where the good angel was now, she answered, ‘Gone to heaven, and the devil has taken his place; but I’ll outwit him yet.’

“I believe the devil was there, for she lost every franc she had gained, and I led her from the room a ruined woman. She was sick three days; then she rallied, and, in spite of all I could say, she went back to the Casino.

“She had grown so old in the few days; her face was like a corpse, and she was bent over and sat huddled up, wrapped in furs like a mummy, and said she was going to break the bank or die. It was awful to see her, so 227white and trembly, her head shaking and her hands like claws as she put down her money, small sums at first; then, as she won, more and more and more, winning all the time, till people stopped to look at the old Russian woman breaking the bank.

“I don’t know but she would have done it if she hadn’t got dizzy with the awful big lot she made at her last venture. The croupier looked surprised, as if he wondered how long he could hold out. But madame’s time had come. She’d made her last play, and fell back against me, with a cry, ‘Zaidee! Zaidee! I can’t breathe!’

“We got her into the open air, and up to the hotel and in bed, with hot-water bags around her, for she was cold and stiff as a stone, and clinched tight in her hand was some gold she was going to put on the table when the spell took her. I pried it out, and she snarled at me like a dog, and talked all night of breaking the bank. She was much better the next day, and made me figure up how much she had made, and she looked so queer, sitting up in bed, shaking all over, with her teeth out and her nightcap on, chuckling when I told her the amount.

“‘You have been a good girl,’ she said to me. ‘You’ve helped me win many times, when I would have put my 228pile somewhere else. I’m going to make you a present, and then make my will.’

“She gave me—how much do you guess?”

“A hundred rubles?” I ventured, in reply.

“A hundred!” Zaidee exclaimed. “A thousand! And she counted it all out and handed it to me. Then she said, ‘That is your dot when you marry.’ Then she asked for pen and paper, and made her will. Everything here belongs to her son. She’d nothing to will but the money she had won at Monte Carlo, and this, after a few rubles to each of the servants, she gave to monsieur, on condition that he did not marry that woman. ‘He will know what woman,’ she said. ‘I’ve kept him from her a good while,’ If he married her, the money was to go to some charities.”

As Zaidee said “that woman,” she gave me a knowing look, and I felt a chill run down my back, for I was sure I knew who was meant by “that woman!” and that she had thrust out her hand to strike me from her grave. She need not have worried, I thought. He does not want that woman, and she does not want him.

“She was to have her will executed the next day,” Zaidee continued, “but she grew worse that night, and raved about monsieur, and breaking the bank, which she 229meant to do the next day, but just before morning she died. The bank had broken her. I did not think it worth while for monsieur to come all that distance for her, and I took her home alone. I sewed my money into my petticoat, for fear of losing it. They put madame in a lead coffin, and we started. I had always gone second-class in the train as her maid, but, with a thousand rubles in my skirt, I could afford something better. I came first-class, and she as baggage—and liked it!

“They gave her a big funeral, with piles of flowers, and nobody cried but Chance, who was shut up in his kennel, to keep him out of the way. They gave the money to monsieur, and I handed him the will, which she had given me to keep till it was signed and witnessed.

“I saw him read it, with a queer look on his face, and then he threw it into the fire, and watched it burn to ashes. It was no good, of course, anyway, and the money was his. I am quite sure he has given every ruble of it in charity, and he seems like a different man. Everything is different, house and all.”

“Who keeps it?” I asked.

“We all keep it,” said Zaidee; “but I do the most of the ordering. He wished me to wear black, because his 230mother liked me so much, and he gave me my clothes, and we get on fine, with no dread of anybody. I told him about the money madame gave me, and he takes care of it, and sees to the interest. I feel quite rich!”

“Do you ever hear from Carl?” I asked.

I saw a flush on her face, as she answered: “He wrote to me once. He is on a farm, and doing well, and is respected, he says. He wants me to write to him. Do you think it would do?”

I knew what she meant, and, contrasting the tall, well-dressed, well-mannered girl with the young man whom I only remembered as trying to snatch my bag from me, I didn’t know whether it would “do” or not.

“Do you care for him?” I asked; and she replied: “Not much. I used to like him when I was a little girl, and he was always kind—ready to divide his last crust. Many a time I have warned him when the police were coming, and once I hid him from them, and lied. How I did lie for him! We were both brought up in dirty mud puddles. Mine were dirtier than his, but I think some of the mud has been rubbed off me; don’t you?”

“Yes, a great deal,” I answered, thinking of the tangle-haired girl I had first seen on the Nevsky, barefooted, 231and bare-legged. “You are greatly improved,” I said; “and possibly Carl is the same. Write for him to come to St. Petersburg. You can soon tell if it will ‘do.’”

She shook her head. “Carl mustn’t come here,” she said. “The old places and friends might tempt him. He has a kind of itching at the end of his fingers. I have thought I’d like a trip to Siberia, and see how the land lies. I have money, you know.”

She spoke with the air of a millionaire, and I think her thousand rubles made her feel like one.

“That is better,” I said; and, as I saw her making a move to go, I detained her, and, speaking very low, said: “Zaidee, you know everything. Have you ever heard of the Scholaskies since Ivan was sent to Siberia?”

Zaidee’s face grew pale for a moment, and her eyes were unnaturally bright, as she looked at me and then at the door opening into the hall. It was shut, but under it was a wide crack, where it had shrunk, admitting light from the hall, and across that bar of light it seemed to me a shadow fell. Zaidee saw it, and, to my surprise, asked if I spoke French.

“I picked up quite a little in Monte Carlo. It came easy. I speak it some, and understand it better. If madame is willing, we will try that language. Mrs. Browne 232does not understand it, and can listen all night. It is like her, I know.”

She nodded toward the door, where the shadow had moved. Some one was there, and I said: “I understand you. Go on.”

She spoke very low, and in very bad French, but I comprehended, and my blood curdled as I listened.

“Madame Scholaskie had died within a few months after reaching Siberia,” she said. “Sophie—the real Sophie—was with her when she died, and then went back to Paris, leaving Ivan alone, and after a while he escaped, and he is in the city, and has been over a year, and has cheated the police every time, so they didn’t dream he was here till lately, when they learned it somehow, and I believe that is why they have sent for M. Seguin to come home. They have faith that he can find anybody. But he’ll not find Ivan! No, ma’am!”

She spoke in a low whisper, with her head bent toward me, and a strange light in her black eyes.

“Zaidee,” I said, “do you know where Ivan is?”

She did not answer me, only her eyes grew larger and brighter and more defiant.

“Have you seen him?” was my next question.

“Yes, at some of our meetings; he speaks, and we believe 233all he says. He has a wonderful way with him. You ought to hear him. He’d make you believe your black gown was white. That’s why they are afraid of him and want to get him again.”

“Zaidee,” I said, “what do they want—the nihilists, the agitators?”

“A different government,” she answered, promptly. “One more like yours, and the English. One in which we have a voice. We have no wish to shed blood, nor harm the czar—the weak, timid man, ruled by the grand dukes. We want some rights to make us free and intelligent and educated, like the poor in your country. Instead of that, we are almost as much slaves as we were before the emancipation. You ought to see the poverty and misery on the farms in the country. We are held down with an iron hand; but it must open—it will open—and Russia be free!”

She was very eloquent, and showed the effect of the meetings she had attended, and where Ivan probably charmed the people with his eloquence.

“Where do you meet?” I asked.

She was silent a moment. Then she laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks.

“I must tell you,” she said. “It is too good to keep. 234Every one of monsieur’s servants believes as I do, and we met once in madame’s drawing room, when monsieur was in Moscow, and there was nothing to be feared from him. I think it was too bad, and wonder madame did not appear to us, she hated us so. The room was packed, and Ivan spoke, and such a speech! But he advised us never to meet there again. We should respect the dead, he said, and it was a wrong to Monsieur Seguin. I think we are ashamed of it, but it seemed a big joke at the time. We shut Chance in his kennel, so he wouldn’t see any of them, and recognize them again, especially Ivan.”

“When was this?” I asked, with some sternness in my tone.

“Last night,” she answered, after a little hesitancy, and suddenly I remembered how late old Alex was out.

“Was Alex there?” I asked. “Is she one of you?”

Zaidee’s face was a study for a moment; then she said:

“Yes, Alex was there—that queer-looking old woman! It makes me laugh to think of her. But I have talked too much,” she continued. “Mrs. Browne would not keep Alex an hour if she knew she sometimes came to our meetings, but I can trust you; and now I must go.”

She put her hand on Chance, who had been sleeping at my feet, and went noiselessly to the door, opening it 235so swiftly that Chance nearly fell over good Mrs. Browne, who was in a crouching position, and had not time to straighten.

“Oh, my conscience!” she exclaimed, picking herself up. “You here yet? I was just coming to see if the ladies wanted anything before shutting up the house.”

Zaidee said nothing, except “Good-night,” as she left the house, with her hand on Chance’s collar, for he showed signs of not being very happy, and growled a little at Mrs. Browne. I knew the woman had been listening, and knew, too, that she could not have understood Zaidee’s French, which was spoken very low and sometimes in a whisper. Ivan was safe, so far as she was concerned.

“I hope that girl is not a plotter,” she said, as she brought me the fresh water I asked for.

“She is in Monsieur Seguin’s employ, and he is a gendarme. That ought to vouch for her,” I answered, feeling myself a plotter and hypocrite and everything bad as I went to bed, but not to sleep.

Ivan escaped, and in the city, and making speeches in Madame Seguin’s drawing room! It made my head whirl, and I wondered how it would end. He would be captured, of course, and sent back, or to the fortress, or the knout. I shuddered and grew sick as I thought of it. 236Where was he, and what was there about this girl Zaidee that she should know so much and be in the thick of everything, as she seemed to be?

I laughed to myself as I thought of a nihilist meeting in Madame Seguin’s drawing room, but resolved to speak seriously to Zaidee on the subject the next time I saw her. She was carrying matters with too high a hand in her master’s house, and reminded me of the lines about putting a beggar on horseback.

I could understand now, I thought, why Ivan had never answered Katy’s letter. He had left Siberia, perhaps, before it reached there, or he had been too busy taking care of himself to think of writing. He had escaped detection for more than a year, and I began at last to have some faith in Zaidee’s assurance that he would never be caught. I hoped not. I could not think of him hiding here and there, with this cloud on his young life, unless he escaped to America, and I was not quite sure whether I wanted him there or not. I had never known him as a man. It was Sophie—a handsome young girl, with a pleasing personality and gracious address—who always came before me, and it was her voice that was sounding in my ears when I at last fell into a troubled sleep just as daylight was beginning to show in my room.

CHAPTER XVII. ALEX SPEAKS.

I had my breakfast in my room the next morning, for my head ached and I was still in a bewildered state of mind with what Zaidee had told me. It was Alex who brought my breakfast, stumbling as she came in, for she was not very steady on her feet.

“Corns, a whole bushel,” she said, when I pointed to her feet swathed in big cloth shoes.

I had conceived a prejudice against her, for no reason unless it were that Mrs. Browne lauded her so high and she was so uncouth in her appearance. She had evidently been overworked when young, for her back was bent as backs are not usually bent at her age, which, I guessed, was between fifty and sixty.

She was stiff and slow in her motions, as if moving her arms and feet was difficult. Her hair was gray, and twisted into a knot at the back of her head. Across her forehead it was cut square, and worn low, and was rather bushy in its style, as if it might curl with coaxing. Over her head and tied under her chin was a silk handkerchief, 238with the side pulled up over her good ear. Her dress was black and short, and was protected by a wide, gingham apron.

Everything about her was faultlessly clean, and, as she put my breakfast tray upon the table, I noticed that her hands, though large, were not as rough and knotty as one might have expected in a common peasant. Her eyes I could not see distinctly, because of the bluish spectacles she wore, fastened with a string over her ears; but it struck me that they were very bright and piercing; they certainly looked very sharp at me as she stood a moment awaiting orders. I thought she wished me to speak to her, and I said, at last:

“Is your head better? Mrs. Browne said it was aching last night.”

“Much better, thank you,” she replied.

Apparently she heard me, although I didn’t raise my voice very loud. Her good ear was toward me, it is true, and my voice was of that quality which is readily heard. She stepped outside a moment, and returned with two dusters—feather and silk—her weapons of warfare, I called them—and attacked a chair near me, while I studied her curiously from her swathed feet to her head tied up in a handkerchief. I laughed mentally as 239I thought of her in Madame Seguin’s drawing room among the brocade-covered sofas and chairs. How much did she hear of Ivan’s speech? I longed to question her, but did not know how to begin.

At last a happy thought came to me, and I said: “Zaidee was here last night. You know Zaidee?”

“Yes, I know her,” she answered.

“She told me of a meeting in Madame Seguin’s drawing room,” I continued. “You were there.”

I could see the old woman’s eyes flash under her spectacles as she stood with her feather duster uplifted, and said: “Zaidee is a tattler; she talks too much.”

“But I am safe; she knows that,” I answered; “and so would you, if you knew me better.”

She went on with her dusting, and I continued: “I believe Madame Seguin would turn in her coffin if she knew of the meeting. I wonder she didn’t appear to you. It was wrong in Zaidee to allow such a thing.”

“I know it,” the old woman said. “We all knew it, but she insisted. She’s a child of the Old Nick, I do believe, but smart as a whip.”

“She said you had a very fine speaker. Did you like him?” was my next question.

Alex did not reply for a moment, but rubbed a table 240leg with her silk duster, as if she would take off all the varnish, if possible. Then she said:

“I didn’t think much of him. I wouldn’t go across the street to hear him again. I tell you what,” and she straightened up and turned toward me. “We want something besides talk, talk of what a government should be. We want the government itself. We want to act—rise in a body and march upon the grandees, and make them give us our rights! That’s what we want, and mean to have!”

She was flourishing her feathers in one hand and her silk duster in the other, and looked as if she were ready to lead a mob at any time against the Winter Palace and Hermitage and Gatschina and Tsarselo, if necessary.

Just then Mrs. Browne appeared, to see what kept Alex so long, and instantly the feathers moved rapidly across a window stool and mirror, and then the old woman declared the room done, and asked what next she should “fly at.”

I did not see Alex again that day, and for the next few days I was busy taking my friend to different parts of the city. I knew that Alex had her night out, and came in late, with her shoes off. She had been to a nihilist séance, of course; but where? And was Ivan 241there? And why didn’t Zaidee appear, and report, if she knew anything?

I was getting so nervous that at last I resolved to question Alex, at any risk, and ascertain what she knew. My opportunity came with the dusting process, which took place every day at nearly the same hour.

She was a little more bent than usual that morning; had a “catch in the back,” she said, and, contrary to her usual manner, she grumbled some about hard work and poor pay.

To these complaints I made no reply, but let her talk on, or, rather, mutter to herself, until she was very near me, when I asked: “What do you know of Ivan Scholaskie? Where is he?”

The catch in her back must have left her suddenly, for she straightened herself to her usual position, and answered: “Madame is Ivan’s friend?”

“Yes,” I said; “I knew him as Sophie, his sister. I was present when he was arrested. I know that he is in the city, or was, and is hiding from the police. I am greatly interested in him. Where is he?”

“Safe, quite safe. Madame need have no fear,” she replied. “Zaidee told you he was here?” she continued. “Zaidee talks too much.”

242“Yes,” I assented; “but where is Zaidee? I thought she might bring me some news of Ivan.”

“She is busy cleaning up,” Alex said. “The house is a sight, and Monsieur Seguin is expected home. That dog had the run of everything—sleeping where he liked, but mostly on a silk lounge, where he has left his mark. We have had another meeting there.”

“You have!” I exclaimed, with a feeling of resentment that the mistress’ memory should be thus outraged. “Zaidee should not have allowed it.”

“She didn’t want to,” Alex said; “but the pressure was great, and she had to yield. And such a rabble as came! Even I was ashamed, and made a speech against it.”

“You did?” I said, smiling, as I fancied that old woman standing on a chair, as she said she had done, to harangue the crowd, threatening to report them to the master in some way, if the thing was repeated.

“Some of them hissed me,” she said, “and charged me with being a half and half—one half for the aristocrats and one half for my party. I tell you, nihilism is a hard road to travel!”

“Was Ivan there?” I asked. And she replied: “Yes; he was the big card, and he didn’t like it, and said so, 243and they hissed him. They are like shuttlecocks, some of them, shouting for the czar to-day and ready to kill him to-morrow, if the right leader could be found. It’s a volcano with a thin crust we are on.”

I looked at the woman in surprise at her language and manner. They did not agree with her appearance.

“Alex,” I said, “you have not always been what you are now?”

“Maybe not; but it is the present which tells,” she replied; and as just then Mrs. Browne’s voice came along the corridor, like a foghorn, calling for Alex, the old woman gathered up her dusters and left me in a maze of perplexity.

Nearly a week passed, and was spent by Mrs. Whitney and myself in sight-seeing. Alex had another night out, but did not stay late, and it seemed to me she was a little absent-minded the next morning when she came to do her work.

“Have you seen Ivan?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she replied. “Don’t worry about him. He is safe; but the police think they are on the track of a gang of nihilists, and are busy searching for them like needles in a haymow. They can save themselves the trouble. There are more nihilists in the city than they dream of. 244They are everywhere, in every rank, and ready to shield each other.”

That night Zaidee came for a short time. She could talk of nothing but the renovation of the house for the master, who had returned the night before.

“You ought to see the drawing room,” she said; “swept and cleaned, with fresh curtains and flowers; no signs of the meeting, when old Alex talked to us standing in a chair, with her shoes off. Did she tell you? I nearly split my sides laughing, and so did some of the others. Chance was with us, barking his approval when we cheered, and sitting on the silk couch the rest of the time. Monsieur does not suspect it yet, and praises me for a good housekeeper. I feel pretty mean and ashamed. But”—and her voice dropped—“they are hot after Ivan, and have put monsieur on the scent. I have an idea they will search this house. I came to tell you, and Alex, if I can see her. That dragon, Mrs. Browne, watches me pretty closely.”

At that moment Mrs. Browne appeared, a dark frown on her face when she saw Zaidee.

“Oh, you here yet?” she said, and, taking a seat, began to talk with me as unconcernedly as if Zaidee were not in the room.

245After this Zaidee left, first asking Mrs. Browne very meekly if Alex were home, and if she could see her. Nothing could have been more forbidding than the sound of Mrs. Browne’s voice as she replied that she presumed Alex had gone to bed; she “kept good hours, as all domestics should.”

Zaidee bowed, and said good-night, with a courtesy to Mrs. Browne. Whether she saw Alex or not, I did not know. I think she did, and it was later than usual when the old woman came to do my work the next morning, armed this time with water for the hearth, as well as her dusters.

Mrs. Whitney was sitting with me, and this, I think, repressed Alex, although the moment she entered the room I felt a thrill of expectancy, as if something out of the common order was going to happen.

Putting down her pail of water, she turned toward me, and was about to speak, when Mrs. Browne rushed in, her face flushed, her eyes protruding, and the false piece she wore on the front of her head all awry, as if she had put her hand suddenly to her hair and pushed it aside.

“What do you think?” she began, dropping into a chair, and wiping her face with her apron, “that a peace-abiding woman should be so disgraced and insulted! The 246police, or one of them—that high-up one, Seguin—is here in my kitchen, questioning the servants as to whether they had seen Ivan Scholaskie about the premises!

“Ivan Scholaskie, indeed! How would they know him, or harbor him, when they are true as steel to the czar? I told the fellow so, and he laughed, and said: ‘Maybe, but I’d like to see them. There may be some acquaintances among them, or possibly they have means of secreting a comrade. Can I see their rooms?’ I was so mad! And I wish I had never rented this Scholaskie house. I believe it reeks with the very atmosphere of them. Ivan here, indeed! Where is he?”

I could not enlighten her, and she went on: “I called the servants together, and told him to ask them what he pleased.”

“‘Are these all you have in your employ?’ he asked, and I told him all, except old Alex, who was in Miss Harding’s room. I’d call her.

“‘No,’ he said. ‘It does not matter. I must go to Miss Harding’s room; to all the rooms, in fact.’

“Then I gave him a piece of my mind; insulting me, an English woman! And I come to warn you not to be scared. He really acts like a gentleman, and as if he hated his work. I must go now and tell the other guests. 247Alex, be cool, if he questions you, and be sure and clean that mantel and hearth as they ought to be cleaned, and have not been in a week.”

She hurried away, and as Mrs. Whitney, at the first mention of police, had fled to her room, I was alone with old Alex, who turned her face toward me with a reassuring smile, and then went on with her work.

“Alex,” I said, “if he asks you if you have seen Ivan, what will you tell him?”

“A lie, of course,” was the prompt reply. “We all have to do that, and ask forgiveness afterward.”

Just then Michel appeared, his face lighting up as he saw me, and extended his hand.

“I knew you were here,” he said. “Zaidee told me, and that is why I came on the unpleasant duty of inquiring, instead of sending Paul Strigoff, who is most anxious to try his luck again with Ivan. I am glad to see you, and to find you as young as you were five years ago, when we met in the Gulf of Finland.”

He was still holding my hand, and his whole manner toward me was different from what it ever had been. There was no apparent repression about him now, as if keeping something back. He was genuinely glad to see me, and showed it in his voice and manner, as he asked 248after Katy and Jack, and laughed as he recalled the fearless boy, who was going to set the United States Government against Russia if the officials did not let Ivan go.

“And the young girl?” he said. “She was very lovely, and must be lovelier now than she was then. I wish this scamp Ivan, who escaped from Siberia—Heaven only knows how!—and has kept himself from the law for more than a year, I wish, I say, that he was in America, where such as he belongs, and where he could make something of himself better than hiding like a rat in a hole, or in many holes. He has a rare faculty of attracting people to him. Not a nihilist in the city would betray him. Zaidee did let out something accidentally, which made me think she knew where he was, but, when I asked her, she replied: ‘No, sir! I’d be broiled on a gridiron before I’d tell where he was, if I knew—and so would the rest of us!’ From the word ‘us,’ I knew she was one of them, as I had suspected. You know, perhaps, why I am here?”

“Yes; you are looking for Ivan,” I replied. “And I am glad you came, instead of that terrible Strigoff.”

“Do you know where Ivan is?” he asked, abruptly. And I answered, quickly: “No. I do not know; and, if I did—I am somewhat like Zaidee—I should not tell!”

249He bowed, and went on: “I suppose I ought to search your rooms; but, if you say he is not here, I will take your word, and question this old woman a little. What is her name?”

“Alex,” I replied, feeling my blood grow cold as I wondered how Alex would pass the ordeal.

But there was no need for fear in that direction. She was polishing the hearth, and had given no sign that she heard a word we had said.

“Alex,” the officer said to her, but she did not turn her head.

“She is deaf,” I said. “You must speak very loud. Her right ear she calls her good one.”

“Alex!” he screamed.

“Heavens and earth! What is it?” she exclaimed, turning her head a little.

“Stand up! I want to speak to you,” he said.

She stumbled to her feet like one very lame, and in so doing partly upset her pail of suds, while little streams of water went slowly over her clean hearth.

“Do you know Ivan Scholaskie?” was the first question, while Alex clutched the piece of soap in her hand, and looked ruefully at the water on the hearth, as she answered: “Yes, sir.”

250“Do you know where he is?”

“If I did, I would not tell,” was the reply, and it seemed to me the old woman’s bent form straightened a good deal, and her head was held high, nor did it droop in the least at the next question, which made me choke with alarm.

“Were you at my house while I was gone?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Were you there twice?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was Ivan there?”

“Yes, sir.’”

“Did he make a speech?”

“Yes, sir.”

“A good one?”

“Fair.”

“About assassinating the czar and the grand dukes, and the nobility generally?”

Alex’s soapy hand was raised so high that the suds trickled from her wrist to her elbow, as, in a loud, indignant voice, she exclaimed: “It’s a lie! The czar was not mentioned, nor his precious uncles. He told us the kind of government we ought to have to make us an educated, 251free people, daring to call our souls our own. He is not an anarchist!”

“And you met in my drawing room?”

“Yes,” and Alex laughed at the remembrance of it. “I knew it wasn’t right, and I made a speech against it——”

“And stood up on one of my satin-covered chairs, and left the print of your feet on it!” was the gendarme’s next remark, at which Alex laughed again, but answered, promptly: “I had to stand on something to look over their heads, and I took off my shoes.”

“But left the outline of your feet, the same. That is the way I tracked the affair,” M. Seguin said, and this time more sternly than he had before spoken.

“I am sorry about the chair,” Alex said; “and, as soon as I can save enough, I’ll pay for it.”

A wave of the hand was Michel’s reply.

“Anything more, sir?” Alex asked.

“Not this time,” was the answer; and then Michel turned to me, and said: “You knew Ivan as Sophie, and liked him. Everybody likes him, and that is where he is dangerous. I believe this old woman—Alex is her name? Yes, Alex—knows where he is. Tell her to urge him, from you, to get out of the country and go to 252America. That may sound strangely from me, a gendarme, but I have no wish to arrest him. Still, I must do it, later, if we find him.”

He spoke the last words very loud, so that Alex could hear them. A low grunt showed that she did.

“I must go, now, and quiet that landlady, who is nearly insane because I am here,” Seguin said to me, offering his hand, and saying good-by, with a promise to see me again, and, perhaps, give me good news of Nicol Patoff.

CHAPTER XVIII. IVAN.

So much had happened that Nicol Patoff was scarcely more than a pleasant memory, and now, as I thought of him, it was not exactly as I had done years before. He had gone out of my life, and another had taken his place, and my cheeks burned with both regret and shame, that I could not feel happier to hear news of him. But any delight I might have felt was swallowed up by what happened as M. Seguin left the room.

Alex had finished her hearth, and, with a politeness I had often noticed in her, opened the door for him, and bowed him out, bending very low, and straightening so quickly that her crooked back began to move down toward her waist, leaving a flat surface where the ridge had been.

She knew it as soon as I did, and put up her hands to readjust herself, but she was too late, and she stood staring at me, while I sat for a moment unable to speak or move.

Everything connected with Alex flashed like a revelation 254into my mind, and, when I could articulate, I whispered: “Ivan!”

“Yes,” he said, removing his spectacles, and showing me Sophie’s eyes, which I remembered so well. “Ivan, in another guise, which has worked well, and I must continue to assume the character of Alex till I get away to America, as I mean to.”

“How?” I asked; and he replied: “Through you. I was almost in despair when you came, and so tired of these petticoats and the wadding on my back, to make me look bent and old, and the gray wig, and Mrs. Browne’s praise of me as a faithful servant. I have been faithful to her, and shall be till I get away. I am going with you, as your serving woman, I mean. You will get me across the frontier; after that it will be easy.”

I listened, with my heart thumping so loud that I could hear it, and with my whole strength recoiling from the task assigned.

“How did you escape from Siberia?” I asked, feeling I must say something.

“Oh, easy,” he answered. “Sometimes I was one thing, sometimes another, but mostly a woman. I succeed best in that guise, and, as old Alex, I am safe. I must go now to my room and fix my back. I will see 255you again, and arrange. I heard you say you were to leave in a week.”

This was true, and I wished it were the next day, so anxious was I to escape from the mysteries and masquerades and plots of which I seemed a part, and of which I should be a part, if I tried to smuggle Ivan across the frontier as my maid. I couldn’t do it, I said, when next Ivan came to my room. But he was so hopeful and anxious for freedom—and here was his chance—that I began to consider the matter, aided and abetted by Zaidee, who, as she knew everything, knew of Ivan’s plan, and was eager to have it carried out.

“I’d go, too,” she said, “as your friend’s maid, if I wasn’t going to Siberia to see Carl, and see if it will do. I don’t much believe it will, and, in that case, I shall find my way to America. A lot of us want to go, Ivan has said so much of it in his speeches.”

I listened in dismay to this prospect of a colony of nihilists swooping down upon quiet Ridgefield some day, and began to wish I had never seen Russia.

“How did M. Seguin know of your meetings?” I asked; and she replied: “You see, Ivan took off his shoes, and the rags twisted round them for corns. He has no more corns than I have. His feet are beautiful. 256He had to get in a chair to be heard, there was such a jam, and his socks must have been damp, for there are the prints of two feet plain as day on the cushion. I tried to get them off, but couldn’t, and monsieur went for me so fierce I had to tell him. Wasn’t he mad, though? His eyes actually opened wide. He tried to make me tell where Ivan was, but I wouldn’t. I told him it was Alex who stood in the chair, scolding us for having a meeting there. ‘Good for her!’ he said, and, when I told him you were at Mrs. Browne’s, he quieted down like a lamb. He is going to Paris soon, to see about his eyes. I believe he will go on the same train with you, and I shall be off for Siberia. I must go now. I hear the dragon coming. She hates me.”

My brain was in such a whirl that I cannot narrate correctly all that occurred that week, my last in St. Petersburg.

What with sight-seeing and Alex and Zaidee and Mrs. Browne, I had a hard time. At first madame was furious at the thought of losing Alex. What did I want of that old woman, and what would my friends say when they saw her? She didn’t think much of people who would coax one’s servants away; no, she didn’t; and her face wore a most vinegary expression, until Alex broke two 257dishes and spilled a pail of milk over the floor, and took twice the usual time to do my room and Mrs. Whitney’s.

After that the popularity of Alex waned a little. She was old and careless and slow, and grew worse all the time, and I was welcome to her, Mrs. Browne said, and that made matters easier.

Quite to my surprise, Monsieur Seguin approved of the plan, and seemed quite elated over the prospect. He came but once to see me, and was then in a hurry. He was going to Paris, he said, to see a famous oculist with regard to his eyes, and he was planning to leave on the same train with myself. I was afraid my delight showed in my eyes, and, to cover it, I said: “What of Nicol? Can I see him before I go?”

“Perhaps,” he answered. “Leave it to me. I will tell you everything in time.”

I did not see him again till I met him at the station. Zaidee came to say good-by, bringing Chance with her. I felt it was my final farewell to him, for I should never visit St. Petersburg again, and I was weak enough to cry as I put my arms around him and held him close for a moment. Mrs. Browne had allowed him to come into my room, and I made the most of my time, and petted and caressed him and talked to him until it was time for 258him to go. Then I said good-by to him and Zaidee, the girl promising to write from Siberia, and tell me if it would or would not “do.”

“I have your hat yet,” were her last words, as she left the house, pulling Chance with her.

He didn’t want to go, and only my peremptory command started him at last. When he was gone, and I heard the thud of his feet on the walk, I sat down and cried again, partly for Chance, partly for Nicol, whom I had no hope now of seeing, and partly because I was nervous and sick at heart with excitement and fear lest Ivan would get me into trouble. He had no fear, and sometimes whistled softly to himself as he made his few preparations, tying up his belongings in two handkerchiefs. He was out nearly all night before we started, but he seemed fresh as ever in the morning, and I think he wanted to tell Mrs. Browne who he was when, in response to his good-by, she replied she had no good-bys for ingrates!

I got him away safely to the station, where, to my delight, M. Seguin was waiting for us.

CHAPTER XIX. NICOL PATOFF.

I had half hoped Nicol might be with Michel, but he was alone, and came eagerly forward to meet us, seeing to our tickets and passports and comfort generally, and taking particular care of the supposed Alex, at whom the officials looked suspiciously.

“Madame’s maid,” he explained, and then they looked more surprised, as if questioning my taste; but my “serving woman” was not molested, and my heart beat more freely when at last the train moved off, and we were leaving St Petersburg. Altogether, it was a big farce, and a risky one, for the police were eagle-eyed, and I was glad when we crossed the frontier and were on German soil. With Mrs. Whitney present, I could not question Michel of Nicol until we stood for a moment alone on the platform; then I said to him: “What of Nicol? Where is he? I hoped I might see him.”

“Wait till we get to Paris, and you shall hear the whole story. Be content to know that he is safe and well,” he replied.

260After this there was nothing to do but wait until Paris was reached, where I went to the Bellevue, after depositing Ivan with his sister, where he was to stay until we decided in what guise he was to cross the ocean, as he was resolved to go with us, if he went as steerage. The second evening after our arrival Mrs. Whitney, who retired early, had gone to her room, when Michel, who was stopping at the Grand, was announced. He had seen a famous oculist, and been assured there was help for his eyes, and was very cheerful and happy.

“I have seen Ivan, too,” he said, “and he has come out quite a swell from his tailor’s hands. He couldn’t wait to throw off that disguise, which had made him feel so humiliated. I assure you, there is no danger,” he continued, as he saw the pallor on my face.

“Ivan!” I exclaimed. “How did you know it was he?”

“I knew it all the time!” and he laughed immoderately. “The Scholaskies have given the police a world of trouble, especially Ivan, who, I believe, could deceive his own mother. As Sophie, he was magnificent; but I knew it was Ivan that night I came and found you there. I was sure of it, but I could not arrest him in your presence. I think that boy would have torn my eyes out, and you 261would never have forgiven me, so I left it for Paul Strigoff, and tried, even then, to prevent it, for that night, at least. You remember the note I sent you, asking you not to go on the ice?”

I bowed, and he went on: “I wished to spare you, if possible, but failed. Ivan was arrested and sent to Siberia, and escaped, no one knows how but himself. As old Alex, he passed a year in St. Petersburg, and no one suspected him until I got a clew, no matter how, and went to Mrs. Browne’s. The moment I saw him I guessed I had my man, and, the more I saw of him, the more certain I became. But I would not arrest him before you. I would wait, I said, and, when I heard he was going to America, I made up my mind to let the poor fellow go, and I kept Paul Strigoff from the scent, and I’ve got him across the frontier and into Paris, where he is safe. You should have seen his face when he first saw me at his sister’s, and a few minutes after. when I told him the truth. I think he would have gone on his knees to me, if I had let him. As it was, he cried. It is dreadful to see a strong man cry, and he is a manly fellow, and has endured so much, that the reaction brought the tears in showers, while his sister kept company with him. He will come and see you to-morrow 262night. Don’t cry. I have seen tears enough,” he continued, as I began to sob hysterically.

“Let me cry!” I said. “You have been so kind to me, since the first time I saw you, that I cannot help it; but there is one favor more I must ask. What of Nicol?”

He did not speak for a minute; then, taking my hand in his, he said, very low: “Lucy! Lucy!”

I nearly fainted, in my surprise. The name, and the voice in which it was spoken, carried me back to a time when Nicol had said “Lucy” just as this man said it. Incident after incident crowded upon me, until the chain was complete, and I said: “You are Nicol Patoff!”

“Of course. Who should I be?” he answered, laughingly. “I am the so-called Nicol Patoff, once your teacher and always your lover.”

“Oh, what is it? How is it?” I asked, looking to see if I could recognize any likeness to Nicol. I should have known his eyes, but they were half closed, and his beard covered so much of his face that he was nearly as well disguised as Ivan had been as Alex.

“It is a long story, but I will make it as brief as possible,” he said, still holding my hand. “The Patoffs once lived in our house, and they had a son, Nicol, a friend of mine, through whom I imbibed nihilistic sympathies. I 263attended their meetings. I became convinced that they were right in many respects, but did not join them, thanks to my mother, who heard of my intention, and kept me locked up till my zeal abated somewhat. The Patoffs went to Constantinople, where Nicol died, and I became a little tired of the nihilist tyranny—and it is a terrible tyranny.

“I was suspected of being in a plot of which I never heard. But it made no difference. I was a suspect, and I conceived the idea of going to America until the storm blew over. Why I took Nicol’s name I hardly know, unless it was to escape being followed, if the officials got on my track. I think they were more severe then than they are now. Nicol was still alive, but dying from consumption. I wrote him I was going to take his name, and why, and he replied, ‘All right. Use me any way you like. I shall soon be gone.’

“The next day he died, and I started for America, and finally drifted to Ridgefield, and turned teacher of languages—the only thing for which I was fitted. You were my favorite pupil from the first, and I came to love you as men like me love but once. I could not tell you of my love. You were too young, and that cloud of nihilism was over me. You have seen my mother, but you do not 264know half how strong a character she was. She had influence, and finally arranged that, if I renounced my connection entirely with the nihilists, I could return in safety. I did so, but carried a thought of you with me always.

“I am a restless character. If I could not be a nihilist—and I confess to you that my sympathy has, in a way, always been on that side—I would be a gendarme, and that would insure me against suspicion of any kind, and after my return I was looked at askance by my old friends who had known of my principles before I left the country. As a gendarme I was safe, but always felt myself a coward and hypocrite.

“My mother was furious, and was never reconciled to my position. But I know I have done some good to the poor, cowering wretches who have been arrested and sent to Siberia, where, if I had kept on my way, I might have gone.

“I could not marry while my mother lived. She would have made both myself and my wife unhappy. So I gave up thoughts of matrimony, but not thoughts of you.

“Years passed on, and I stood high in my calling as a detective. The day you came on the boat the authorities 265were expecting a famous anarchist, and I was sent to arrest him. He was not there, but you were, and I knew you in a moment, although you could not recognize me.

“When you confronted me with Nicol Patoff, my heart gave a bound, for I had not heard the name in years, and no one except my mother knew I had ever taken that name. I could not explain to you on the boat, and a sudden temptation came over me to mystify you, as I did, without dreaming you would take matters with so high a hand. I would explain later, I thought, but I began to enjoy the mystery, and I liked to hear what you had to say of Nicol Patoff, and your eager defense when you thought him in danger.”

“But you deceived me shamefully!” I said, indignantly; and he replied: “I know I did, and felt like a monster and liar, and still I never really lied but once, and then to save you, I told that Massachusetts friend of yours, whose tongue was like a mill wheel, that the lock of hair I had was black instead of red. You remember it?”

I bowed, and he went on: “I have no good excuse which you can fully understand. Several times I was on the point of declaring myself, but you always upset my plans. You told me you did not love Nicol, and that you 266could never live with him, or anyone else, in his house, or in Russia. If you did not care for him enough to live with him, I had no reason to think you would care for me.

“And, then, my mother was an obstacle in the way. She would never have received you, or treated you well. She disliked Americans on general principles. But she is dead, and I am free, so far as she is concerned. Providence has thrown you in my way three times. I believe there is luck in the third time, and I ask you now to be my wife.”

At first I could not speak. I did not like the thought of having been deceived so long, and of having expended so much sympathy on something which did not exist, and I said so, pretty hotly. He laughed, and, laying his hand on my head, said: “Your hair hasn’t lost all its red yet, has it?”

“No, and never will, where deceit is concerned. It was a wicked, foolish farce, and I don’t like it,” I said.

“Neither do I,” he answered, with his hand still on my hair. “It was unworthy of me, but I rather enjoyed it, after all, for I liked to hear you talk of Nicol, knowing I was he. And now, can you forgive the past, and think of me as you used to do? I will try to make you 267very happy—not in Russia,” he said, quickly, as he saw me about to speak. “Whether you marry me or not, I shall leave the country and go to America. Many predict trouble for Russia in the future. There is unrest everywhere, and treachery. You don’t know whom to trust. Every servant of mine is a nihilist, and Zaidee the worst of all. But mother never suspected it. If she had, she would have flayed them alive, if she could. I am tired of it, and shall go to a free country, where, as Carl Zimosky once said, one can sneeze without being made to tell why he did so. And, if I come to Ridgefield some day, will you be my wife?”

Every word he said was telling upon me, for there was a wonderful magnetism about him, and I felt much as I did when he came to me under the maple tree to say good-by. That was years ago, when I was young, and it seemed ridiculous that people of our age should be making love, and I said so.

“Why not?” he answered. “I am fifty, and you are forty, and look thirty. You see, I have kept your age, and I know no reason why middle-aged people should not be in love as well as young ones, especially when the germs have been maturing for years, as mine have for you. Can I come to Ridgefield? Will you be my wife?”

268He was very persistent, and repeated his question till I answered: “You can come to Ridgefield, and I will think of it, and, like Zaidee, see if it will do.”

“Then you are mine,” he said, kissing my hands passionately. “I’ll not kiss your face,” he added, “till some of my beard is off, and I am more like the Nicol you knew.”

It was late when he left, and two or three times he turned back from the door to kiss my hands and say good-night.

The next evening the cards of Mr. and Miss Scholaskie were brought to me, and, after a few moments, a young man, faultlessly attired, was offering me his hand and asking if I knew him. I should never have recognized him as the girl I had seen arrested, or the old woman who had cleaned my hearth and dusted my chairs. He was in high spirits, and said he shouted aloud when he dropped off Alex’s disguise and felt he was a man again.

“Free, free,” he kept repeating, until I asked if there were no danger of his being inquired for.

Then, for a moment, a shadow darkened his face; but he soon brightened, and replied: “I think not, and so 269does Seguin. He is a brick, as you Americans say. He is going to America later on, he said.”

I felt my cheeks burn, and wondered if he knew what had passed between Michel and myself. If he did, he gave no sign, but asked how soon we expected to sail, and if it was from Havre. I told him, and he continued: “I shall secure my passage to-morrow. Then I shall run over to London to say good-by to my grandmother. You have seen the old lady, and can judge the time I’ll have with her. She will dislike my going to America to become a citizen nearly as much as she disliked my being a nihilist. Mais n’importe. I am going, just the same.”

I did not see him again until his passage was taken and he had been to see his grandmother.

“Pretty fine old lady, after all,” he said, in speaking of her. “Her bark is worse than her bite. She called me a fool several times, and said it was the Scholaskie blood that ailed me, and that, if I went to America, the first she would hear, I would be leading an anarchist mob in Chicago, and get shot—and serve me right, too! When I was ready to leave, she cried a little, and told me I was not to mind all she had said, and asked how much money I had. I told her, and she declared none of her kin should ever go to America with so little, and, going 270to her desk, she wrote a check for a thousand pounds! Think of it! ‘Alex’ with a thousand pounds! I hugged the old lady, who pushed me off, and said: ‘No slobbering over me. I’m not made that way.’ Then, as I stood in the hall she took both my hands and said: ‘Ivan, you are a bad boy, and your father was bad before you, or you and he might be living in your old home on the Nevsky, instead of one dead in Siberia, the other an escaped prisoner going to America—after a girl, I know,’ she continued. ‘I’ve seen her—a pretty little thing, but an American. If you marry to suit me I shall give your wife my diamonds, and they are worth something, let me tell you. Pin, earrings, pendant and all these.’ She held up her hands and I counted six rings. I made her let me kiss her and told her I should probably marry to suit myself if I could. Then I left, but she stood in the doorway and watched me till I turned a street corner. What do you think of that for a grandmother?”

He was wild with delight over his thousand pounds, and full of speculation as to what he should do with it when he reached New York.

One week from that day we sailed from Havre, and Ivan was with us, happy as a schoolboy on a vacation. The horrors of Siberia, the hiding and dodging and masquerading—old 271Alex with her humpback and gray hair, and the many other disguises he had assumed on his escape from Siberia were behind him. Before him was a free country, and a pair of blue eyes was beckoning him across the water. Michel went with us to Havre. I had only seen him three times since our first interview, and then some one was always present. He seemed nearly as happy as Ivan. There was hope for his eyes, and he was sure of me, he said, when we stood on the ship together for a few minutes a little apart from the crowd and with our backs to it.

“Don’t be too sure. I have not promised,” I said, while he laughed, and when the call came for “All ashore who are going ashore,” he stooped and kissed me, saying: “Beard or no beard, this once; yes, twice,” and I felt his lips on both my cheeks.

“God bless you,” he said, and hurried away, while I watched him with a sense of loneliness I could not repress.

He was one to lean upon and trust to the death, and I missed him so much. Ivan was very kind, but he was young and full of his freedom and Katy, of whom he talked very freely.

Except for his face and smile he did not seem like 272the Sophie I had known. He was a man, with a man’s ways and voice and manners and talk, and I could scarcely make him seem real. What would Katy think of him? I had told him of the letters she wrote and which he never answered. There was a great joy in his eyes as he exclaimed: “She did write, then? I am so glad. I looked for it days and days, or mother did. It must have come after mother died and I was on my way to St. Petersburg, skulking like a dog in the daytime and moving on at night. I tell you I could write a book of my adventures, and perhaps I shall.”

I had written to Katy of Alex’s transformation and telling her that Ivan was in Paris, but not that he was coming with us. I wished to surprise her. With Jack she came to meet us and looked wonderingly at the young man helping Mrs. Whitney and myself off the ship and carrying our bags and wraps. Evidently she did not know him, but Jack did, and with a bound he was at Ivan’s side, exclaiming “Sophie, Alex, Ivan! Which are you now? The biggest joke I ever heard of! Auntie’s waiting maid! Hello, Katy! Where are you? This is Ivan, his own self, in coat and trousers, instead of dresses.”

This broke the ice, but Katy was rather stiff as she 273went forward to meet him, and she remained so during our drive to the hotel and the lunch we had there. But when she and Jack were ready to leave for their train she gave him a smile which atoned for all her coldness, and said: “Father will be glad to see you in Washington whenever you choose to come.”

“Father! Thunder, Katy! Why don’t you say we shall be glad? You know we shall,” Jack exclaimed.

“We, then,” Katy answered, with a second smile which took Ivan with them across the ferry to their train, and we did not see him again, as before his return we had left for Ridgefield.

CHAPTER XX. MRS. SCHOLASKIE.

Just how Ivan’s wooing of Katy sped I had no means of knowing except through Jack, who wrote:

“Ivan has been here and gone. I tell you he is the right kind. I took him everywhere and introduced him to everybody, and told them he was an escaped nihilist, and had been disguised as a lady in satins and silks, and as an old woman with a hump on her back and a gray wig. That made him a lion at once and folks stared at him till he got tired and said: ‘Please drop Alex and Sophie and the escaped nihilist. It sounds too much like “escaped convict.” I am an American citizen, or going to be as soon as I can be naturalized.’ So I dropped ’em. What a handsome fellow he is, with manners which take you right off your feet! Where did he get ’em? I wonder. Father likes him. Katy was stiff as a ramrod at first, but she—I did not mean to listen, but I got in a trap where I could not help myself and heard something about a letter she wrote and he never got. After that they made up. Oh, my! I just 275doubled up to hear the silly talk—and—kisses! Yes, sir! kisses! loud as firecrackers! and Katy such a modest little girl. I wouldn’t have believed it of her!”

After Ivan’s return to New York he made the acquaintance of some influential Russians through whom he secured a tolerably lucrative position and was able to keep his grandmother’s gift intact. He came once to Ridgefield during the summer, and I was struck anew with his appearance as a polished gentleman, with the qualities of a splendid man, and when he said “Katy has promised to be my wife,” I congratulated him most sincerely and felt that Katy had chosen well. Sometime in October there was a quiet wedding at my brother’s. Among the wedding presents was a box within a box sent by Ivan’s grandmother and containing all her diamonds except one ring and a small stick pin. She wrote:

“I am getting too old to wear them. My neck is too wrinkled and my hands too full of veins. They will look better on your bride. Give her my love and an old, cranky woman’s blessing. I’m not pleased with the match. Don’t think I am. You ought to have married in your own sphere and not have turned clerk, or something. 276What have you done with the money I gave you? There is more where that came from. God bless you and your wife.

The diamonds were a fortune in themselves, and Katy said she should never wear them, but the next winter, when Ivan and Katy spent several weeks in Washington, I read notes of the beautiful Mrs. Scholaskie and her exquisite diamonds, “heirlooms of her husband’s family,” and concluded Katy had changed her mind.

It is nearly two years since I came from Europe, and a warm May sunshine has tempted me to the seat under the maple tree where Nicol bade me good-by. He is here beside me reading the morning news of the troubles in poor distracted Russia over which war clouds are hanging so darkly. He came last fall—a new Michel, with his eyes wide open and full of the tender, loving light I remembered so well in Nicol’s soft brown eyes. Much of his beard was gone and he looked younger than when he wore the uniform of a gendarme. That life he had left behind him with his old home, which, as he could not sell it to advantage, he had shut up.

277“Maybe she will come here with me some time,” he thought. I never shall. He did not ask me if I would marry him, but when, and was so persistent and masterful that we were married at Christmas time and went to Washington for a part of the winter.

My father is old, and as he has a good deal of property both in town and in the country, where he has a large farm, he has asked Michel to stay with him and look after his business; so, for the present, we are settled in Ridgefield.

And now, as we sit in the sunshine, Chance lies stretched on the ground between us, his tongue out and breathing as hard as if he had been running miles instead of chasing a neighbor’s cat across the garden to the barn. After we were married Michel wrote for him to be sent by express, with injunctions that he should be well cared for. We both went to New York to meet him as he came from the ship, rather gaunt and sorry-looking and tugging hard at the chain by which he was held. At sight of us he gave a cry between a bark and a howl, and wrenching himself from the man who was holding him, he sprang upon us, putting one paw on my shoulder and one on Michel’s, and looking at us reproachfully, as if asking why he had been made a prisoner. 278And behind him came Zaidee, to our great surprise.

“You didn’t expect me, I know,” she said, half crying and half laughing; “but I had to come. I went to Siberia and saw Carl, and it wouldn’t do! I tried hard to have it, but no use. I do not think he would steal a penny now, but somehow it wouldn’t do! He said I was ‘airy,’ living so long with old madame. Maybe I am, but I couldn’t stay with him and came back to St. Petersburg and hired out to Mrs. Browne to do the work Alex did. I tried hard to suit, but nothing I did was ever quite as well as Alex did it. I wanted to tell her who Alex was, especially when she wondered if they had ever found that fellow the gendarme came hunting for in her house; but I didn’t. I was that lonesome with the old house shut up and M. Seguin away that I couldn’t stand it, and when I heard you and monsieur were married and had sent for Chance, I said: ‘I’ll go, too, with the dog,’ thinking I might see if they used him well. I came second-class, but they wouldn’t let me see the dog. I knew about where he was, and once I went as close to him as I could and called ‘Chance! Chance!’ at the top of my voice. You never heard such a roar as went through the ship, scaring the passengers, who 279thought some wild beast was let loose. I was told to mind my business, and I did. The creature looks half starved, but here we are, all of us, and I am so glad. I must go now and look after my baggage.”

She went back to her poor little hair trunk, which was gone through from top to bottom, where lay my hat nearly rimless and crushed out of all shape. She kept it, she said, because but for it she would still have been in the slums, or in Siberia.

She took it for granted she was to live with us, and a more faithful servant I have never had. She is nearly as much interested in the war as Michel. He says very little, except that he is glad he is not in St. Petersburg.

Zaidee is more pronounced. She does not think much of the government, she says, but it makes her mad to have great giants of Russians whipped by little bits of Japs, and madder still to have the people burst up right after the czar has told them they might pray to any god they pleased. Zaidee’s ideas are rather crude, but, on the whole, pretty sound. Ivan is very decided and makes no secret of his sympathy with the Japs, and but for Katy he might perhaps join the army.

But Katy’s quiet, gentle influence helps to keep his hot blood down, and now that there is in the household a 280little Sophie, who came on Easter, he does not talk as much of the war as he did, and is settling down into a very domestic husband and father.

And so, after a series of rather stormy scenes in a far-off land, the curtain drops on the homes of four happy people; two of them middle-aged but loving each other with all the fervor of youth, and two young, with the world before them—a world Ivan with his restlessness says he means to see as soon as Jack is out of school and can go with him. When he heard this Jack threw up his cap and hurrahed for his Russian brother-in-law, and might have hurrahed for Russia generally if Ivan had not stopped him.

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