It was the same where I had stopped three years before, and as I had telegraphed for the room I had then occupied I found it ready for me, with a small one adjoining for Jack, who insisted upon registering, and made a great flourish of Washington, D. C., U. S. A., as if that would insure us attention. We did not need it, for the employees were ready to serve madame, whom they remembered, while Boots, who was still at his post and not much grown, nearly fell down in his eagerness to show me to my room, which was warm and comfortable and brightened with a bouquet of hothouse flowers standing on a little table near a window.
The feeling of homesickness and dread of some calamity I was to meet, which had been tightening around my heart ever since I reached the snow-girt city, began to give way.
I was ashamed of myself for having felt disappointed at not seeing M. Seguin either at the station, or in the street, or at the hotel. He did not know I was coming, and how could he be there? Besides, why should he be there, anyhow? I was a mere acquaintance of three years ago. I had passed out of his life and he out of mine. The memory of those in whom I had been interested in St. Petersburg had faded. Probably Nicol Patoff was dead, and if he were not, my heart did not beat as rapidly at thought of him as it once had done. Of all the crowd who had waved me a good-by when I left the city there was not one to greet me on my return, and I had felt a positive ache all the way from the station to the hotel, and wanted to cry when I entered the old familiar room which brought back so many memories. But the flowers changed everything. Somebody had thought of me. Somebody had sent me a welcome. Who was it? I asked Boots; but he did not know. They had come a few hours before for the American lady, Madame Garden—that was all he knew, and I was left to my own conjectures.
Katy and Jack were delighted with the hotel and wanted to go at once into the street. But I was too tired to go with them. Jack would have gone alone, armed with Washington and America, and possibly Abraham Lincoln, as defenses against any danger. But I kept him in, and was glad when the short wintry afternoon drew to a close and the night came down upon the great city and its gay, animated streets.
CHAPTER IX.
SOPHIE AS GUIDE.
We had been in St. Petersburg nearly a week, and during that time Jack and Katy had seen a great deal under the guidance of Sophie, who, true to her promise, came to us the day after our arrival and offered to take us wherever we wished to go. I had thought I knew St. Petersburg well, but with its dress of snow and ice, and the thermometer twenty below zero, it seemed to me a new city, and I was glad of her escort. I had, however, taken the precaution to ask the landlord confidentially if he knew the Scholaskies.
“Oh, yes,” he answered. “Madame Scholaskie is well known. Her husband died in Siberia,” and he gave his shoulders a shrug. “They are fine people; once among the first—that is, the medium first. I hear Mademoiselle Sophie is home for a little visit. Splendid-looking girl!”
After this I felt quite at ease when Sophie took the young people out sight-seeing, while I stayed at home by the fire, for I was cold in the open air and glad to keep out of it. St. Petersburg was not much like what it had been in summer when sometimes scarcely a person was to be seen on its long, wide streets. Now these same streets buzzed with life, and no one seemed to mind the cold any more than they had the heat. The czar was at the palace, and the Nevsky and Court Quay were full of gay equipages, driving at a headlong pace. The tinkle of the bells filled the frosty air with a kind of monotonous music not altogether unpleasing. The Neva, which in winter is the great highway of the city, was frozen solid, and although the Blessing of the Waters had not yet taken place, it was crowded with the best and worst people in town. There were spaces for skating, race courses for sledges and artificial hills down which bold persons could guide their sledges alone to the imminent peril of their lives. And all this Katy and Jack saw, and much more, and came home crammed with knowledge and unloaded it to me—for I was supposed to know nothing whatever of all they told me. Jack had commenced keeping a journal in which, boylike, he jotted down incidents as they came to his mind, without much attention to order. This he frequently gave me to read when I was shut in by the cold, saying it would amuse me, and it did. This is how he began:
“St. Pe——, Russia!” he began. “Most thundering cold day you ever knew, and they are all just like it. Wednesday Sophie came for us at eleven o’clock. That’s early here. The sun doesn’t get up till nine. Nobody gets up. The gold ball on St. Isaac’s is over three hundred feet from the ground. It’s an all-fired big building; built on piles driven into the mud. Had to bring a whole forest of ’em from the country. All the houses are on wooden legs, and sometimes the legs give out; then they tip.
“Saw the emperor to-day. Not much to see more than any man. Didn’t look as if he enjoyed his drive. I believe he was all the time thinking there might be a bomb somewhere. I wouldn’t be emperor of Russia. No, sir! I’d rather be Jack Barton, from Washington, D. C., U. S. A. Yes, sir! They say he has six hundred rooms at his palace in Gatschina and only lives in six for fear of being killed. Poor emperor! I don’t wonder he looks sorry and scared. Has to have two hundred cooks to prepare a meal, they say. What a lot he must eat! and at Tzarsko Selo he has six hundred men to work his farm. Must take something to pay ’em! I tell you the Nevsky is a case! and the Neva is bigger, and Sophie is about as big as both of ’em! She knows the city, root and branch, and the people, too, and they know her, but sometimes she acts queer, as if in a hurry to get away from them. I saw a gendarme looking at her pretty sharp, and told her so. She laughed and said: ‘Let him look!’ Well, she is something to look at; she is so tall and big. I like her, and so does Katy, and she likes Katy, and once or twice, all on a sudden, she has hugged Katy as if she wished to eat her, and Katy is awful pretty in her scarlet hood with the ermine trimming. People look at her hard. Men, too, and then Sophie gets angry and hurries us along.