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.She 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.”
“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 andgrand, 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 Frenchmodistecould 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 lookof 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, whichlasted 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 heropinion 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.They 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 herface. “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 thedaughter 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.