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, andone 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 aparoxysm 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 afair, 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 intime, 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 andanother, 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 camefrom 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,and 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 akindness 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.
“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 isbecause 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 cansneeze, if we want to. I have had a jolly time, too. An adventurewith 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!”