Her face glowed with intense excitement as she talked, and the hand which Katy had taken withdrew itself from her grasp and Sophie’s arm went across the young girl’s shoulder with so firm a grip that she winced under the embrace. Releasing herself as soon as possible Katy went back to her seat in the corner, where she sat very quiet the rest of the day, while Sophie and Jack had the most of the conversation, Jack asking questions and Sophie answering them to the best of her ability.
When at last we reached the frontier the first word we heard was “Passports,” spoken rather peremptorily by a tall, uniformed soldier, who motioned us into a side room where our baggage was brought with that of the other passengers. I was glad now for Sophie’s help. My first entrance into Russia had been by water and with comparatively little trouble. I had been met by M. Seguin, and I found myself looking round involuntarily in hopes of seeing him now, although I knew the hope was futile. The officers were very different in looks and manner from him. They were rather cross, and there were a good many passengers clamoring for passports to be returned and their baggage to be examined and viséed. I was tired, like the officials, and impatient at the delay, as I saw no reason why business should not be dispatched as it is in America instead of the leisurely way natural to the Russians. Jack was very much excited, and if he could have spoken the language he would have given the lazy officials fits, he said. As it was he caught hold of one who was leisurely inspecting my trunk and said: “Look here, you, sir; that is my auntie’s and there’s nothing in it, and she wants it some time to-day. Do you speak English?”
The officer stared blankly at him and shook his head, while Jack, who felt himself the man of the party, continued: “Parlez vous Français, then, if you don’t speak English?”
There was a second head shake, and Jack went on: “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”
A third shake of the head, with a laugh which exasperated the boy.
“Confound you!” he said. “What do you speak? I tell you we are in a hurry to get out of this stuffy hole into the next room, and we are Americans—Americans!”
He screamed the last two words as if the man were deaf, and somehow they had their effect, or would have had without my help, for the word American goes a long way toward insuring respect from a Russian. The room was crowded with first, second and third-class passengers, and my head was in a whirl, aching badly, and this had kept me quiet for a time while the babel went on. Now, however, I rallied, not knowing how much the officials could understand, or to what lengths Jack might go. He had been rather free during all our journeyings to inform people that he was an American, from Washington, where his father, who was a colonel, held an office; and I was expecting him to give this last piece of information to the crowd when both Sophie and I went to the rescue. She had been attending to her own trunk, and I was very sure that more than one or two rubles had changed hands. Her baggage was examined, or pretended to be, her trunk viséed, and then she turned toward us. What she said I don’t know, it was spoken so low, but I heard the word America, and our passports were at once given to us, our trunks examined in a perfunctory way, and we were free to enter the waiting room. Some of Sophie’s friends had come to meet her, both men and women, and that she was held in high favor was shown by their evident delight at meeting her. I heard Ivan’s name and supposed they were inquiring for him, but did not hear her reply, as she stood with her back to me. We were to separate here, as she was to go with her friends, while we were to have our own private compartment, telegraphed for in advance.
“I shall see you soon again,” Sophie said to us as she bade us good-by and stood for a moment with her fur cloak wrapped round her and her cap drawn down upon her face.
There was something about her which puzzled me and made me think it might be safe not to be too intimate with her. I believed her a nihilist of a pronounced type, who might unwittingly get us into trouble; but I did not say so, for Jack and Katy were full of her praises. They lamented greatly that she was not to be with us in the long, dreary journey to St. Petersburg, with nothing to look at but snow, snow everywhere and more coming, first in large, feathery flakes, which gradually grew smaller until they came sifting down in clouds which the wind sometimes took up and sent whirling across the bleak plains in a blizzard. Whenever we stopped and there was time, Sophie came to our section, bringing with her a world of cheer to the young people, who, without her calls, would have found the journey depressing. As it was, it seemed interminable, and we were glad when we at last rolled into the station at St. Petersburg. I had recovered from my headache and was able to see to my own baggage without Jack’s loud assurance that we were Americans and Sophie’s offer of assistance. There seemed to be a good many of her friends to meet her here as there had been at the frontier, and she was attended like a princess to the smartly equipped sleigh waiting for her. For a moment we stood watching her as she moved along holding up her cloth skirt to avoid the snow and showing her tightly fitting boots with their French heels.
“Almighty big feet for a girl, but then she is big all over,” was Jack’s comment as we turned to the sledge which was to take us to our hotel.