_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 watchdogs. 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 was 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.
“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 just 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.
“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 him 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?”
“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 are 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 wonder?” 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.”
Mary 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 my 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 to 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 treasures, 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 speak 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.”
“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 porter 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 from
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.