I did not see him again until his passage was taken and he had been to see his grandmother.
“Pretty fine old lady, after all,” he said, in speaking of her. “Her bark is worse than her bite. She called me a fool several times, and said it was the Scholaskie blood that ailed me, and that, if I went to America, the first she would hear, I would be leading an anarchist mob in Chicago, and get shot—and serve me right, too! When I was ready to leave, she cried a little, and told me I was not to mind all she had said, and asked how much money I had. I told her, and she declared none of her kin should ever go to America with so little, and, going to her desk, she wrote a check for a thousand pounds! Think of it! ‘Alex’ with a thousand pounds! I hugged the old lady, who pushed me off, and said: ‘No slobbering over me. I’m not made that way.’ Then, as I stood in the hall she took both my hands and said: ‘Ivan, you are a bad boy, and your father was bad before you, or you and he might be living in your old home on the Nevsky, instead of one dead in Siberia, the other an escaped prisoner going to America—after a girl, I know,’ she continued. ‘I’ve seen her—a pretty little thing, but an American. If you marry to suit me I shall give your wife my diamonds, and they are worth something, let me tell you. Pin, earrings, pendant and all these.’ She held up her hands and I counted six rings. I made her let me kiss her and told her I should probably marry to suit myself if I could. Then I left, but she stood in the doorway and watched me till I turned a street corner. What do you think of that for a grandmother?”
He was wild with delight over his thousand pounds, and full of speculation as to what he should do with it when he reached New York.
One week from that day we sailed from Havre, and Ivan was with us, happy as a schoolboy on a vacation. The horrors of Siberia, the hiding and dodging and masquerading—old Alex with her humpback and gray hair, and the many other disguises he had assumed on his escape from Siberia were behind him. Before him was a free country, and a pair of blue eyes was beckoning him across the water. Michel went with us to Havre. I had only seen him three times since our first interview, and then some one was always present. He seemed nearly as happy as Ivan. There was hope for his eyes, and he was sure of me, he said, when we stood on the ship together for a few minutes a little apart from the crowd and with our backs to it.
“Don’t be too sure. I have not promised,” I said, while he laughed, and when the call came for “All ashore who are going ashore,” he stooped and kissed me, saying: “Beard or no beard, this once; yes, twice,” and I felt his lips on both my cheeks.
“God bless you,” he said, and hurried away, while I watched him with a sense of loneliness I could not repress.
He was one to lean upon and trust to the death, and I missed him so much. Ivan was very kind, but he was young and full of his freedom and Katy, of whom he talked very freely.
Except for his face and smile he did not seem like the Sophie I had known. He was a man, with a man’s ways and voice and manners and talk, and I could scarcely make him seem real. What would Katy think of him? I had told him of the letters she wrote and which he never answered. There was a great joy in his eyes as he exclaimed: “She did write, then? I am so glad. I looked for it days and days, or mother did. It must have come after mother died and I was on my way to St. Petersburg, skulking like a dog in the daytime and moving on at night. I tell you I could write a book of my adventures, and perhaps I shall.”
I had written to Katy of Alex’s transformation and telling her that Ivan was in Paris, but not that he was coming with us. I wished to surprise her. With Jack she came to meet us and looked wonderingly at the young man helping Mrs. Whitney and myself off the ship and carrying our bags and wraps. Evidently she did not know him, but Jack did, and with a bound he was at Ivan’s side, exclaiming “Sophie, Alex, Ivan! Which are you now? The biggest joke I ever heard of! Auntie’s waiting maid! Hello, Katy! Where are you? This is Ivan, his own self, in coat and trousers, instead of dresses.”
This broke the ice, but Katy was rather stiff as she went forward to meet him, and she remained so during our drive to the hotel and the lunch we had there. But when she and Jack were ready to leave for their train she gave him a smile which atoned for all her coldness, and said: “Father will be glad to see you in Washington whenever you choose to come.”