_LETTERS._
From St. Petersburg we went to Italy for the rest of the winter; and
April found us again in Paris, at our old quarters, the Bellevue. As
soon as we were settled, we looked up Sophie Scholaskie, whom we found
up three long flights of stairs, in a very pretty little apartment,
where she lived alone, with a woman to come morning and night to see to
her rooms. She was a very handsome young woman, and so much like Ivan
that I did not wonder he could pass for her so easily. She was delighted
to see us, especially Katy, in whom she seemed to feel she had a
particular right of ownership, and whom she scrutinized very closely all
the time we were with her, and kissed at parting, saying, “For Ivan’s
sake!”
She talked a great deal, but in a pleasant, ladylike way, asking many
questions about her mother and Ivan. She had tried to keep him from
going to St. Petersburg, she said, knowing how hot-headed he was when
among his own friends. But nothing could deter him, and Siberia was the
result. He had been there some time. Indeed, she believed he had started
on his northern journey the day we left the city. He had been treated
with a good deal of kindness, thanks to Michel Seguin, who had used his
influence all along the line. Did we know Michel?
The color in my face was a sufficient reply, and she went on: “Of course
you do. I remember hearing of the American lady whom he would marry, if
she were willing and it were not for his termagant old mother.”
“No!” I exclaimed. “M. Seguin neither wants me nor I him. We are
friends; that’s all, and his mother need have no fear of me.”
Sophie laughed, and replied: “It would be good, pious work to live with
her, I think. She is here now, at the Grand Hotel, with her maid,
spending what she won at Monte Carlo. Perhaps you’d like to call upon
her? This is her day.”
“Never!” I answered, quickly, with a vivid remembrance of her manner
toward me the night I dined with her.
I had had enough of Madame Seguin, but did not express myself to Sophie,
who spoke next of her grandmother, who lived in London.
“I think old ladies all get queer,” she said, “and grandma is the
queerest of all, but I want you to call upon her. In fact, she expects
you. She is half English, you know. Her mother was a Londoner, but her
father was a Russian. She may amuse you.”
I was not in a very good mood to be amused, but I took Madame Reynaud’s
address, and promised to call, if I had time, and the next day we left
Paris. There was some misunderstanding with regard to our passage, which
we had thought secured, and we were obliged to stay in London several
days.
As time hung rather heavily upon our hands, I suggested one afternoon
that we call on Madame Reynaud, and see what she was like. We found her
in a fine apartment on Piccadilly, near Hyde Park, and attended by a
butler, cook and maid. She was a little, wizened-up, old woman, painted
and powdered, with many rings on her shriveled hands and large
solitaires in her ears. She received us with a great deal of ceremony,
and ordered tea at once. She had heard of us from her daughter and from
Sophie, whom she supposed we had seen at her treadmill work, she said.
Then began a tirade against Sophie for earning her own living, “teaching
every kind of brat, when she might live with me, and be something
besides a breadwinner. I see a good deal of society, for there is blue
blood in my veins, English as well as Russian, and I am as proud of the
one as of the other.”
I thought I should greatly prefer Sophie’s life to one with that
blue-blooded woman. She took up Ivan next, but not until she had nearly
thrown Katy into hysterics by saying, in a very brusque way: “And this
is the little girl Ivan fancied when masquerading as Sophie? And did you
fancy him?”
“Madame,” Katy replied, with great dignity, “I liked your grandson, as
Sophie, very much. I have never known him as Ivan.”
“Well put—well put!” and madame laughed, with a kind of cackle, which I
detested.
“You’d better never know him as Ivan,” she continued. “I’ve warned him
what he’d come to, and he has come to it. I have no patience with a
nihilist, or anarchist, or striker of any kind. They deserve Siberia, or
something worse, and I’m glad Ivan has his deserts at last—masquerading
in petticoats! Yes, he has his deserts. It’s the Scholaskie blood, not
mine—not the Rubenstein on the Russian side, nor the Burnells on the
English. I’m proud of both. And my daughter is going to join her
scapegrace son? Well, let her; her husband died there. He played the
rôle of a beggar, and was caught; Ivan played the fine lady, and was
caught—served ’em right—served ’em right! I would not turn my hand to
save him. Have some more tea?”
She spoke to me, but I declined. She suggested that I should drive with
her in the park, but I was anxious to get away from the dreadful old
woman. As we were leaving, she put her hand on Katy’s shoulder, and
said: “You are a bonnie little lassie, as the Scotch say, and, if Ivan
were not such a fool, and you were not an American, I think it would do,
and I should know where to leave my diamonds. I lie awake nights
thinking about it. There is no one but Ivan’s wife and Sophie, and
diamonds would be out of place on her, as a music teacher. They are
worth having, eh?”
She touched the large pendants in her ears, and held up both her hands,
on which seven rings were sparkling. Katy made no reply; she was as
anxious to leave the house as I was, and we both breathed more freely
when out in the open air in the bustle of Piccadilly.
A few days later we sailed for home, and, as my brother’s house in
Washington was rented for the year, Jack and Katy came with me to
Ridgefield, where Jack found ample scope for his talent in narrating to
the boys of the place his adventures in Russia. Katy was very reticent.
Something had come over her spirits, and for hours she would sit silent,
with a look on her face as if her thoughts were far away. Once I spoke
of Ivan, when there came a look of intense pain on her face, and she
said: “Don’t, auntie. I can’t bear it. To think we are so happy here,
and so free, and he is a prisoner in Siberia, doing I don’t know
what—working in a chain gang, maybe.”
I disabused her mind of that idea, and a few days later there came to me
a letter, worn and soiled, as if it had been long on the way and had
passed through many hands. It was from Ivan, who was in Southern
Siberia, and his mother was with him. He was happier, he wrote, than he
had thought it possible for him to be as an exile and prisoner. He had
met his fate, and it was not as bad as he had expected. Southern Siberia
was not like the dreary north. He was a prisoner, it was true, and under
surveillance, but he scarcely felt it, as he had nothing to conceal, and
since his mother joined him he was tolerably content. He had heard of
Jack’s daring defense and Katy’s earnest appeal for him, and thanked
them for it.
Then he spoke of Katy particularly, saying:
“Under my woman’s dress a man’s heart was beating, and I was not
insensible to the loveliness of your niece. She attracted me the moment
I saw her in the train, and the attraction grew until I think I was as
much in love with her as a man ever is with a pure, innocent girl, and
my love was intensified from the fact that I had to conceal its nature.
It was not Sophie who kissed her, but Ivan, the man who longed to take
her in his arms, and who sees her now shrinking from me as if she half
divined the truth. Did she, I wonder, and is there in her heart anything
which responds to my love? I am a Russian, but I can live in America,
and conform to American customs. I am a prisoner, but that does not
count. There are many men here who stood higher in the social world than
I did. Four years—the term for which I am banished—pass quickly, and,
when I am free, I shall come to America, if Katy gives me the least
encouragement to do so. She may not care to write to me, as other eyes
than mine would see her letter, but tell her to write to mother a
friendly letter, making no mention of what I have written. I shall take
it as an answer in the affirmative, and nothing in Siberia can trouble
me again. By the way, you have some old friends here—Ursula and her
nephew, Carl, who, I imagine, is naturally a hard ticket. But he is
doing his best as a farmer, and will be quite a respected citizen in
time. Mother joins me in love to you all, and says tell you that old
Drusa is with us, and we are not very unhappy. She knows what I have
written, and will look anxiously for Katy’s letter. God bless you all!
IVAN SCHOLASKIE.
“I heard, from Sophie, that you called on my grandmother in London, and
that she gave you her opinion of myself quite freely. She is a holy
terror!”
This letter Katy read several times, but it was some days before I spoke
of it to her, and asked if she intended writing to Madame Scholaskie.
For some moments she made no reply, and when, at last, she did, her
voice was very low and her face flushed, as if she were ashamed.
“To write to madame will be encouraging Ivan, and I don’t know as I
ought to do that, I have such peculiar feelings with regard to him. I
loved Sophie as I have never loved any other girl, and yet there was
always something queer about it; and, when I knew she was Ivan, I
recoiled from her for a while. I have never known Ivan as a man; never
seen him in a man’s clothes. If I had, I should know better what to do.
I must think.”
She took a week to think, and then one day surprised me with a letter
she had written to Madame Scholaskie. It was very short, very
commonplace, I thought, and had in it no mention of Ivan, except at the
last, when she wrote:
“Please remember us all to your son. We are glad he finds Siberia
endurable.”
I thought it very cold, but it was a letter, and would answer Ivan’s
question. For three days it lay upon the library table, directed and
stamped, and then one morning I missed it as I came to breakfast after
the postman’s call, and Katy said to me: “I have committed myself. The
letter has gone, but may never reach its destination.”
Weeks passed, and months, and no answer came to Katy’s letter. Her face
wore a look of disappointment, but she never mentioned Russia
voluntarily. Jack, on the contrary, was never tired of airing his
exploits, and telling of Ivan’s arrest in a woman’s clothes, and what he
said to the gendarme in Ivan’s defense; and, when these topics failed,
Chance was a fertile theme. Unknown to any of us, he wrote to M. Seguin,
and received an answer, written, I think, as much for my benefit as for
Jack’s. There was a long account of Chance and his doings, which pleased
Jack.
“You will, of course, show this letter to your aunt,” Michel wrote, “and
tell her she is not forgotten, and that I have only to mention her name
to Chance, telling him to find her, when he springs up, racing all over
the house, and, if the door is open, rushing into the street, in his mad
search for her; and, when he fails, he comes back and puts his head in
my lap, with a sorry, human look in his eyes, as if asking where she is,
and why she does not come. I ask that, too, sometimes. I am very lonely
now, as mother is in Monte Carlo, with Zaidee, who is growing to be a
tall girl, quite unlike the frowzy head to whom your aunt gave her hat.
That hat is still in existence, hanging in Zaidee’s room, in place of an
_icon_, I verily believe. The girl says she does not believe in _icons_.
She believes in the religion of the United States, and when I asked her
which one, telling her there were many creeds and isms there, she
promptly answered: ‘Miss Harding’s religion, of course.’
[Illustration: “SHE WAS A LITTLE, WIZENED-UP OLD WOMAN, PAINTED AND
POWDERED.”]
“I have heard of Ivan—that he is doing well and feeling well. His sister
has been to St. Petersburg to dispose of the furniture of the house.
Some of it she sold, some was rented with the house, and some she
stored, in case her mother should return, which is doubtful, as she is
very feeble. Tell your aunt that I bought the square table at which she
was playing cards when I came looking for Ivan. I hardly know why I
bought it, when our house is full of tables, but I did, and it has a
place in what I call my den. Tell her, too, that I am writing on Nicol
Patoff’s desk, and that I know no more of him now than when she was
here. Your sister was a beautiful little girl. Give her my love, if she
cares to take it from an old man like me. And give it to your auntie,
too. I always think of her as a girl, she looks so young. Tell her that
the old _drosky_ man, who, the winter she was here, was keeping his
bones warm in his mud hut on the plains, has come back, with a new
establishment and new horse, and loudly laments that he did not have the
pleasure of driving little madame. He thinks he lost a great deal—not so
much in kopecks as in honor. He took Zaidee out one day, rather against
his will, as he remembered the touzle-haired girl who had your aunt’s
hat, and hardly thought it fit that she should ride in his new _drosky_,
even if she is transformed into a fine-looking girl, with a tongue in
her head, he said, and a devil in her eyes! He nearly upset her, he
drove so fast, and she was glad to escape with whole bones. Zaidee is
what you call a _case_—a rank nihilist at heart, I believe, but she
covers it so well that mother does not suspect. If she did, she would
not tolerate the girl a moment. She is death on anarchy of any kind.”
There was more in the same strain, and Jack did not think much of the
letter as a whole. It was more for me, he said, than for himself, and
I’d better answer it. But I didn’t, and time went on, and Russia seemed
to me far in the past, and as something I should never see again, when,
in the summer two years after our winter’s experience, I was there
again, the companion, or guest, of a lady who took me with her because I
could speak the difficult language. There was no Sophie Scholaskie with
us this time—no M. Seguin at the frontier. Instead, there were plenty of
officials, rather brusque and rough, as they examined our baggage and
passports and scrutinized me curiously, as if they had seen me before,
and wondered why I was there so often. I wondered, too, before the long,
dreary journey came to an end, and St. Petersburg, with its gilded dome
and spires and palaces, loomed into sight. Then I began to feel at home,
for I knew nearly every foot of the great city, and I recognized some of
the officials whom I had seen before. The hotel did not suit my friend,
who wished for a more quiet place, and, after a few inquiries, we found
it by a strange chance in the very house where the Scholaskies had
lived, and where M. Seguin had come searching for Ivan.