_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 and grand, 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 French _modiste_ could 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 look of 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, which
lasted 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 her opinion 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 her face. “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 the daughter 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.