_MRS. SCHOLASKIE._
Just how Ivan’s wooing of Katy sped I had no means of knowing except
through Jack, who wrote:
“Ivan has been here and gone. I tell you he is the right kind. I took
him everywhere and introduced him to everybody, and told them he was an
escaped nihilist, and had been disguised as a lady in satins and silks,
and as an old woman with a hump on her back and a gray wig. That made
him a lion at once and folks stared at him till he got tired and said:
‘Please drop Alex and Sophie and the escaped nihilist. It sounds too
much like “escaped convict.” I am an American citizen, or going to be as
soon as I can be naturalized.’ So I dropped ’em. What a handsome fellow
he is, with manners which take you right off your feet! Where did he get
’em? I wonder. Father likes him. Katy was stiff as a ramrod at first,
but she—I did not mean to listen, but I got in a trap where I could not
help myself and heard something about a letter she wrote and he never
got. After that they made up. Oh, my! I just doubled up to hear the
silly talk—and—kisses! Yes, sir! kisses! loud as firecrackers! and Katy
such a modest little girl. I wouldn’t have believed it of her!”
After Ivan’s return to New York he made the acquaintance of some
influential Russians through whom he secured a tolerably lucrative
position and was able to keep his grandmother’s gift intact. He came
once to Ridgefield during the summer, and I was struck anew with his
appearance as a polished gentleman, with the qualities of a splendid
man, and when he said “Katy has promised to be my wife,” I congratulated
him most sincerely and felt that Katy had chosen well. Sometime in
October there was a quiet wedding at my brother’s. Among the wedding
presents was a box within a box sent by Ivan’s grandmother and
containing all her diamonds except one ring and a small stick pin. She
wrote:
“I am getting too old to wear them. My neck is too wrinkled and my hands
too full of veins. They will look better on your bride. Give her my love
and an old, cranky woman’s blessing. I’m not pleased with the match.
Don’t think I am. You ought to have married in your own sphere and not
have turned clerk, or something. What have you done with the money I
gave you? There is more where that came from. God bless you and your
wife.
YOUR GRANDMOTHER.”
The diamonds were a fortune in themselves, and Katy said she should
never wear them, but the next winter, when Ivan and Katy spent several
weeks in Washington, I read notes of the beautiful Mrs. Scholaskie and
her exquisite diamonds, “heirlooms of her husband’s family,” and
concluded Katy had changed her mind.
* * * * *
It is nearly two years since I came from Europe, and a warm May sunshine
has tempted me to the seat under the maple tree where Nicol bade me
good-by. He is here beside me reading the morning news of the troubles
in poor distracted Russia over which war clouds are hanging so darkly.
He came last fall—a new Michel, with his eyes wide open and full of the
tender, loving light I remembered so well in Nicol’s soft brown eyes.
Much of his beard was gone and he looked younger than when he wore the
uniform of a gendarme. That life he had left behind him with his old
home, which, as he could not sell it to advantage, he had shut up.
“Maybe she will come here with me some time,” he thought. I never shall.
He did not ask me _if_ I would marry him, but _when_, and was so
persistent and masterful that we were married at Christmas time and went
to Washington for a part of the winter.
My father is old, and as he has a good deal of property both in town and
in the country, where he has a large farm, he has asked Michel to stay
with him and look after his business; so, for the present, we are
settled in Ridgefield.
And now, as we sit in the sunshine, Chance lies stretched on the ground
between us, his tongue out and breathing as hard as if he had been
running miles instead of chasing a neighbor’s cat across the garden to
the barn. After we were married Michel wrote for him to be sent by
express, with injunctions that he should be well cared for. We both went
to New York to meet him as he came from the ship, rather gaunt and
sorry-looking and tugging hard at the chain by which he was held. At
sight of us he gave a cry between a bark and a howl, and wrenching
himself from the man who was holding him, he sprang upon us, putting one
paw on my shoulder and one on Michel’s, and looking at us reproachfully,
as if asking why he had been made a prisoner. And behind him came
Zaidee, to our great surprise.
“You didn’t expect me, I know,” she said, half crying and half laughing;
“but I had to come. I went to Siberia and saw Carl, and it wouldn’t do!
I tried hard to have it, but no use. I do not think he would steal a
penny now, but somehow it wouldn’t do! He said I was ‘airy,’ living so
long with old madame. Maybe I am, but I couldn’t stay with him and came
back to St. Petersburg and hired out to Mrs. Browne to do the work Alex
did. I tried hard to suit, but nothing I did was ever quite as well as
Alex did it. I wanted to tell her who Alex was, especially when she
wondered if they had ever found that fellow the gendarme came hunting
for in her house; but I didn’t. I was that lonesome with the old house
shut up and M. Seguin away that I couldn’t stand it, and when I heard
you and monsieur were married and had sent for Chance, I said: ‘I’ll go,
too, with the dog,’ thinking I might see if they used him well. I came
second-class, but they wouldn’t let me see the dog. I knew about where
he was, and once I went as close to him as I could and called ‘Chance!
Chance!’ at the top of my voice. You never heard such a roar as went
through the ship, scaring the passengers, who thought some wild beast
was let loose. I was told to mind my business, and I did. The creature
looks half starved, but here we are, all of us, and I am so glad. I must
go now and look after my baggage.”
She went back to her poor little hair trunk, which was gone through from
top to bottom, where lay my hat nearly rimless and crushed out of all
shape. She kept it, she said, because but for it she would still have
been in the slums, or in Siberia.
She took it for granted she was to live with us, and a more faithful
servant I have never had. She is nearly as much interested in the war as
Michel. He says very little, except that he is glad he is not in St.
Petersburg.
Zaidee is more pronounced. She does not think much of the government,
she says, but it makes her mad to have great giants of Russians whipped
by little bits of Japs, and madder still to have the people burst up
right after the czar has told them they might pray to any god they
pleased. Zaidee’s ideas are rather crude, but, on the whole, pretty
sound. Ivan is very decided and makes no secret of his sympathy with the
Japs, and but for Katy he might perhaps join the army.
But Katy’s quiet, gentle influence helps to keep his hot blood down, and
now that there is in the household a little Sophie, who came on Easter,
he does not talk as much of the war as he did, and is settling down into
a very domestic husband and father.
And so, after a series of rather stormy scenes in a far-off land, the
curtain drops on the homes of four happy people; two of them middle-aged
but loving each other with all the fervor of youth, and two young, with
the world before them—a world Ivan with his restlessness says he means
to see as soon as Jack is out of school and can go with him. When he
heard this Jack threw up his cap and hurrahed for his Russian
brother-in-law, and might have hurrahed for Russia generally if Ivan had
not stopped him.
THE END.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Page Changed from Changed to
48 through suits of rooms on the through suites of rooms on the
walls of which were some walls of which were some
● Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.