“Do you know you are having a unique send off?” he said. And when I asked what he meant, he replied:
“Do you notice that group of people in the streets? They are your friends. I saw the tangle-haired girl to whom you gave your hat among them, with Ursula and Carl Zimosky. He brought back the silver himself, knowing the risk he ran. He said he was trying to do better for your sake, because you kept him from Paul Strigoff. I believe every mother’s son and daughter there in the street is a nihilist at heart, and they think you are one with them and are showing their gratitude.”
I could not answer for that lump in my throat, but at the very last I put a limp, clammy hand into his broad, warm one and tried to thank him again for all his kindness to us.
“Don’t, please,” he said, very low. “For anything I have done I have been more than repaid in knowing you—the fearless American woman who dares say what she thinks. I shall not forget you, and some time you will come again.”
I shook my head and hurried toward my companions, who were motioning me to make haste. There was not much need of haste, I thought, as the trains seldom start on time, but this one did, and in a few minutes we were on our long journey of five hundred and sixty miles to the frontier. It was monotonous and wearisome, with nothing to interest us or to look at except the brown plains and forests of pines and silver birches, and at rare intervals a village of twenty mud cottages or more, with a few peasants working in the fields. It was very tiresome, and when at last it ended and we crossed the frontier into Germany eight women simultaneously said: “Thank God!” And yet in the heart of one of the eight there was a lingering regret for all she was leaving; and she felt, too, a throb of sympathy and gratitude for the strangers in the street who had waved her a farewell and sent after her, she was sure, a fervent “God bless you!”
CHAPTER VIII.
SOPHIE SCHOLASKIE.
Three years later I was again in Europe, traveling with my nephew and niece, Katy and Jack, the motherless children of my only sister. We had seen a great deal, for the young people were full of life and health, and eager to see everything—not once, but twice and sometimes three times. I was getting tired and glad of a rest in Paris, where at the Bellevue I was taking my breakfast one morning in our salon, while Katy and Jack were looking up some route presumably to Italy, our next objective point. They were evidently greatly interested and even excited, but were talking so low that I could not catch a word, as I sat and watched them with feelings of pride and half envy of their youth and spirits which could enjoy everything and endure everything.
Katy was a beautiful girl of eighteen, with large blue eyes and a sweet, flower-like face, and hair something the shade mine had been when young, but much darker, with glints of reddish gold showing on it in the sunlight. I was very proud of Katy and of her brother Jack, with his frank, handsome face and a manliness about him one would hardly expect in a lad of fifteen. He had constituted himself the leader of our party and usually had the best route and trains and hotels picked out, and I felt sure the subject of their discussion now was the journey to Italy. It was the last of November and the wind was blowing cold and raw through the boulevards, and the basket of wood Louis brought us gave but little heat.
I was always cold, and was longing for Naples and Sorrento, and was upon the point of suggesting that we start at once, when Katy, whose dead mother looked at me through her blue eyes, and to whom I seldom refused a request, startled me by saying, a little hesitatingly, as if she did not quite know how I would take it:
“Jack and I have been looking up the route and how long it will take, and we want to go to Russia. You remember those people from Boston whom we met last week at the Louvre. Well, we met them again yesterday, when you were not with us. They were in Russia last winter, and, say, you might as well not come to Europe at all as not to go there in the winter. I don’t care for Rome and the pope and the Vatican and the Forum and the house where Paul lived. I want to see Russia!”