[Illustration: “NICOL PATOFF! DO YOU KNOW HIM? WHERE IS HE?”]
LUCY HARDING
_A ROMANCE OF RUSSIA_
BY
MARY J. HOLMES
AUTHOR OF
“Edna Browning,” “The Homestead on the Hillside,” “Maggie Miller,”
“Tempest and Sunshine,” etc.
[Illustration: [Logo]]
THE AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY
PUBLISHERS’ AGENTS
NEW YORK
Copyright, 1905
By Mary J. Holmes
Lucy Harding
LUCY HARDING.
CHAPTER I.
_NICOL PATOFF._
In the summer of 189– I was one of a party of tourists who were going to
St. Petersburg. There were eight of us, all women, strong, fearless and
self-reliant, and all natives of Massachusetts. Two were from Boston,
three from its suburbs, and three, including myself, from Ridgefield, a
pretty little inland town among the Worcester hills. We had a guide, of
course, Henri Smeltz, a German, and if his credentials, which I now
think he wrote himself, were to be believed, he was fully competent to
take charge of eight women with opinions of their own and as much
knowledge of the country they were to visit as he had. It had been the
dream of my life to see the water-soaked city, and when the opportunity
came I accepted it eagerly, with, however, some dread of the fatigue of
the long journey and the annoyances I might meet in the capital of the
czar. I was not a good sailor and I had a great dislike for train
travel, and by the time we had crossed the Atlantic and the Continent
and were on the Gulf of Finland, I was in a rather limp and collapsed
condition. But I rallied as the bright July day wore on, and when the
Russian officers came on board I was quite myself and felt able to cope
with them all if necessary. I had nothing to fear. I was an American
citizen and wore the colors of my country in a knot of ribbon on my
dress. My passport was all right, so far as I knew. But better than this
was the fact that I could speak Russian with a tolerable degree of
accuracy. I was fond of languages, and during my school days had
mastered German and French to the extent of reading and writing them
fluently. My teacher was Nicol Patoff from St. Petersburg, who, outside
of his school hours, had a class in Russian which I joined, and
astonished both Nicol and myself by the readiness with which I acquired
the difficult language which the most of my companions gave up in
despair after a few weeks’ trial and in spite of the entreaties of
Nicol, who assured them that with a little patience what seemed so hard
would be very easy.
He was a tall, handsome young man, with large, dark eyes which seemed
always on the alert, as if watching for or expecting something which
might come at any moment. All we knew of him was that he was from St.
Petersburg. That his father, who was dead, had once been wealthy, in
fact had belonged to the minor nobility, but had lost most of his money,
and this necessitated his son’s earning his own living, which he could
do better in America than elsewhere. This was the story he told, and
although he brought no credentials and only asked to be employed on
trial, his frank, pleasing manners and magnetic personality won him
favor at once, and for two years he discharged his duties as teacher of
languages in the Ridgefield Academy to the entire satisfaction of his
employers. Many conjectured that he was a nihilist, but there was about
him a quiet reserve which kept people from questioning him on the
subject, and it was never mentioned to him but once. Then a young girl
asked him laughingly if he had ever known a nihilist intimately.
“But, of course, you haven’t,” she added. “I suppose they only belong to
the lower classes. You might see them without knowing them well.”
For a moment the hot blood surged into Patoff’s face, then left it
deadly pale as he replied: “I have seen and known hundreds of them. They
belong to all classes, high and low, rich and poor—more to the rich,
perhaps, than the very poor. They are as thick as those raindrops,” and
he pointed to a window, against which a heavy shower was beating. “There
is much to be said on both sides,” he continued, after a few moments.
“You are subjected to tyranny and surveillance, whichever party you
belong to. It is a case of Scylla and Charybdis. Of the two it is better
to be with the government than to be hounded and watched wherever you go
and suspected of crimes you never thought of committing. A nihilist is
not safe anywhere. His best friend may betray him, and then the
gendarmes, the police. You have no idea how sharp they are when once
they are on your track.”
This was a great deal for him to say, and he seemed to think so, for he
stopped suddenly and, changing the conversation, began to speak to me in
German and to correct my pronunciation as he had never done before.
During the next few weeks he received several letters from Russia, and
grew so abstracted in his manner that once when hearing our lesson in
Russian he began to talk to us in French, then in German, and finally
lapsed into English, saying with a start: “I beg your pardon. My
thoughts were very far away.”
“Where?” the girl asked who had questioned him on nihilism.
He looked at her a moment with a peculiar expression in his eyes, and
then replied: “In Russia, my home, where I am going at the end of this
quarter.”
We were all sorry to lose him, and no one more so than I, although I
said the least. There was something in his eyes when they rested upon me
and in his voice when he spoke to me which told me I was his favorite
pupil, but if he cared particularly for me he never showed it until the
day before he left town, when he called to say good-by. I had been
giving my hair a bath and was brushing and drying it in the hot sun when
he came up the walk. I disliked my hair and always had. It was very
heavy and long and soft and wavy, and I had the fair complexion which
usually goes with its color; but it was red, not chestnut or auburn, but
a decided red, which I hated, and fancied others must do the same, and
when I saw Nicol coming up the walk I shrank back in my seat under the
maple tree, hoping he would not see me. But he did; and came at once to
me, laughing as I tried to gather up into a knot my heavy hair, which,
being still damp, would not stay where I put it. I know he said
something about Godiva, then checked himself with “I beg your pardon,”
as he saw the color rising in my face; and, lifting up a lock which had
fallen down, he said: “I wish you would give me a bit of this as a
souvenir.”
“Are you crazy,” I asked, “to want a lock of my hair? Why, it is red!”
“I know that,” he said; “but it is beautiful, nevertheless, especially
in the sunlight. I like red. Can I have a bit?”
He took from his vest pocket a small pair of scissors, and handed them
to me. I was too confused for a moment to speak. No one before had
praised my hair. I had made faces at it in the glass. My brother, who
was a few years older than myself, called me Carrots and Red-top, and,
when in a very teasing mood, pretended to light a match on it. And Nicol
called it beautiful, and wanted a lock of it as a souvenir. My first
impulse was to give him the whole, if I could, and be rid of it; but, as
I gathered the shining mass in my hand, and saw how the sunlight made it
brighten and glisten, I began to have a certain feeling of pride in it,
it was so long and thick and glossy, and curled around my fingers like a
living thing.
“Yes, you can have some of the old, red stuff, if you want it,” I said,
laughingly; and, taking his scissors, I cut a tress where it could not
be missed and handed it to him.
He was my teacher, my friend; he was going away, and I felt I scarcely
knew how toward him, as, with my hair still down my back—for it was not
yet dry, sat beside him, while he talked of Russia, and the difference
between life there and in America, appearing all the while as if there
was something he wished to say, but could not, or dared not.
“Domestic life there is not what it is here. You would not like it,” he
said.
“I know I shouldn’t,” I answered, quickly, and he went on: “But it is
home to me. My people are well born, and I must cast my lot with them,
whether for good or bad.”
“I hope not for bad,” I said, with a little lump in my throat.
“That depends upon the standpoint from which you look,” he replied. “If
I join the nihilists, and you sympathize with them, you will think I go
for good. If I side with the government, and help hunt the nihilists
down, and your sympathies are there, you will say I go for good.”
“Never!” I answered, hotly, stamping my foot upon the ground. “Nihilism
may be wrong, but I detest the government, with its iron heel upon the
poor people, and in a way upon your czar, who is kept more in ignorance
of what is taking place than I am. You are all slaves, every one of you,
from the czar in his palace to the poor serf in his mud house on the
barren plain. I wish I could give your grand dukes a piece of my mind!”
Nicol laughed at my heat, and answered: “You didn’t have that red hair
given you for nothing, did you? I wish you might give them a piece of
your mind, but am afraid it would do no good. Russia is pretty firm in
her opinion of herself. I wish she was different. I have learned many
things in your country which I shall not forget. My life has been very
pleasant here, and my thoughts will often travel back to Ridgefield, and
the freedom such as we Russians do not know.”
“Why not stay, then?” I asked, the lump in my throat growing larger, and
making my voice a kind of croak.
“That is impossible,” he replied. “Russia may be bad, but I can no more
stay away from it than the bird can stay away from the nest where its
young are clamoring for the food it is to bring them.”
“You have friends to whom you are going!” I said; and he replied:
“Friends? Yes; thick as the leaves on the trees in summer, and they are
waiting for me. I am going into danger or honor. I have not quite made
my choice.”
“You are not a nihilist?” I exclaimed, starting to my feet, as if to get
away from him.
With a low, musical laugh, habitual to him when he laughed at all, which
was seldom, he put up his hand and drew me back upon the seat.
“I thought you sympathized with the nihilists?” he said.
“I do,” I answered; “but it is hard to associate you with one. I think
of them as a kind of desperadoes, made so by oppression.”
“There you are mistaken,” he replied. “I told you once that the
nihilists are found with the rich as often as with the poor. Some time
you may, perhaps, read of a gang of people starting for Siberia, and I
may be with them. If not, there will be others in it just as heartbroken
at leaving their homes as I should be. Pray for them, but do not be
troubled for me. I shall escape. I was not born to be a slave, a
prisoner, and there is not power enough in all Siberia to keep me, if I
choose not to stay.”
He stood up, tall and straight, and his eyes flashed with a fire I had
never seen in them before. After a moment he resumed his seat, and
continued: “There is no doubt that Russia is hovering on the crater of a
volcano, which may, at any moment, burst out like Vesuvius. But St.
Petersburg is a right jolly place, after all, and it is my home. I hope
you will go there some day. Your knowledge of the language will make it
easy for you, and you will not find us a bad lot, or know a nihilist
from a partisan of the government. They are all mixed in together. If
you go, I may or may not be there, but find No. — Nevsky Prospect. It
was once my home, where we kept forty servants, falling over each other
and doing less work than half a dozen do in America. It is part of the
system. Here is my card. Good-by, and God bless you!”
He passed his hand caressingly over my hair, and, stooping, kissed me on
my forehead. Then he left me, and I put my head upon the back of the
seat, and cried, with a feeling that something had gone out of my life
which had made it very pleasant.
For a long time I expected to hear from him, but no word had ever come,
and years had gone by, and I was a woman of nearly thirty-five, with my
schooldays behind me, but with a vivid remembrance of that part of them
when Nicol was my teacher. His card was all I had left of the handsome
young Russian who had stirred my girlish heart as no other man had ever
done. I had never forgotten what he said to me of the gang bound for
Siberia, asking me to pray for them, and, in imagination, I had often
seen that gang, and he was always in it, and when I prayed I am afraid
it was for him—for Nicol alone. And now I was going to his country, and
might possibly meet him, if he was there. He would be older, and
probably married. But that did not matter. The pain in my heart and the
lump in my throat when he bade me good-by were gone. That chapter was
closed, but I was thinking of it, and of him, when I had my first
meeting with a Russian gendarme.