Lucy Harding

by Mary Jane Holmes

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.