Why I added the last clause I do not know. There had been no reference to my living there with anyone but Nicol, and that was an impossibility. The gendarme laughed, and said: “Yankee habits and Russian customs would not affiliate well, I am sure. It is better for you to be as you are, and Nicol as he is.”
“Where is he, and of what is he suspected?” I asked, looking the officer square in his face, while his lids drooped lower over his eyes, and the ridge on his forehead grew deeper.
“It is too long a story, and madame would believe nothing against Nicol, if I told her,” he said.
He seemed to take my liking for Nicol for granted, and it made me angry, but my reply was to thank him for his courtesy in showing us the house, saying I knew my companions had enjoyed it, and that some of them would undoubtedly make it a subject for a paper for some of the clubs to which they belonged.
“Clubs, yes!” he rejoined, with animation. “I hear your country is full of them. And of societies called for letters of the alphabet, ‘D. A. R.’s,’ and ‘G. A. R.’s,’ and ‘Y. M. C. A.’s’ and ‘W. C. T. U.’s,’ and ‘Y. P. S. C. E.’s,’ and a host more. I got an American to give me the list, and what they all meant, and tried to commit it to memory, but gave it up. I’d like to see an article any of you might write on our house. I hope you will omit the general untidiness. It is better when mother is at home,” he said, with a bow, as he bade us good-by, saying we were welcome to call again whenever we chose. The old porter knew us now for friends, and would let us in at any time.
“I don’t know why we should ever care to go into that old house again, smelling of must and rats. Forty servants! And I don’t think the windows had been washed this summer, or the big salon dusted,” was Mary’s comment, as we walked rapidly toward our hotel, for it was getting near dinner time.
During the next week we scoured St. Petersburg as well as eight women without a guide could scour it, and by some means gained access to places which our whilom conductor, Henri, who still lounged at the hotel, told us were impossible to be seen without permits from the highest authorities. We had no permits, and just walked in, as a matter of course.
Everything seemed to give way to us, and we went about far more fearlessly, I think, than the czar, when he occasionally drove into town, with his armed police beside him. We had no guards—even Chance had deserted us, and we saw nothing of him or his master after the day we visited the Patoff house. We passed the place two or three times, and always stopped a moment to look at it, but there was nothing attractive in its gloomy, shut-up appearance. The master was evidently absent from the city, and I was not willing to admit that I missed him; but I did, and missed Chance more, feeling always a sense of security when he was with us.
But this did not prevent us from going wherever the fancy took us—sometimes on the beautiful river, Neva, the glory of the city; sometimes in droskies, which were not so terrible as the first one I had tried; but oftener on foot, feeling sure that our numbers and nationality protected us, and gaining courage and daring, until suddenly confronted with an experience we had not counted upon.