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.I 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 theForum 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.And 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 Americathree 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 remainsinstatu quo, and I have given him up. I often see the olddroskydriver, 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.Zaideeis 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,telling 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 Iwilling 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, whichwas 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.
“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?”
The 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 languagelike 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 acase. 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.”
Then she told us that her name wasSophie 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 emancipationact, 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 aban, 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.”
She 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;there 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 inlooks 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 andviséed. 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!”
He 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 trunkviséed, 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 washeld 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, bringingwith 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, whomthey 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 manymemories. 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.