CHAPTER II.
THE GENDARME.
I had pictured them as old, or middle-aged, with gray or white hair, hard faces and fierce eyes, which could look through one and see if there was anything concealed. But the tall man, who bowed so deferentially, and hesitated a little before speaking, as if he thought I would not understand, was quite different. He was neither very old nor grizzled, although his heavy beard, which covered the most of his face, was streaked with gray. I could not judge well with regard to his eyes, as the lids were partially closed, the result of some chronic trouble with them, I afterward learned. I knew they were looking at me sharply—so sharply, indeed, that I felt my face growing red with resentment, and, as he continued to scrutinize me, coming close to do so, all my dread of him and his craft vanished, and, with a proud turn of my head, I said: “Why do you stare at me as if you thought me a smuggler, or a nihilist? I am neither.”
Instantly there came upon all I could see of his face for the heavy beard and into all I could see of eyes for the drooping lids a smile, which made my brain whirl, and for a moment I asked myself if theosophy were not true, after all, and I had lived another life somewhere, and been in the position in which I now found myself, face to face with a gendarme, who, as the smile disappeared under his heavy mustache, said: “Madame speaks Russian well.”
“Thanks!” I replied. “I ought to, with so good a teacher as I had in Nicol Patoff.”
I don’t know what spirit possessed me to mention Nicol’s name. I had never rid myself of an impression that he would rather I should not speak of him to strangers, and I had blurted it out to this gendarme, who started visibly, and repeated: “Nicol Patoff! Do you know him? Where is he?” he asked, and, with every sense alert lest my old teacher’s safety was in danger, I answered: “The last time I saw him he was in America.”
“In America. Yes; but what do you know of him now? Where is he?” was his next question.
“I know nothing of him, except what is good, and, if I did, I should keep it to myself, if the telling it would harm him. He was my teacher and friend, and a gentleman,” I said, rather hotly.
I did not know what right he had to be asking me about Nicol Patoff, and was very angry as I confronted the gendarme, who, I fancied, was laughing at me.
“You don’t know where he is now?” he continued, in good English, and, to my look of surprise, continued: “You see, I can speak your language, though not as well as you speak mine. Nicol Patoff must have been a good teacher, and you an apt scholar.”
I did not reply, but, with a formal bow, left him and joined my companions, who were curious to know what I had been saying to the gendarme. But I was noncommittal, and gave some evasive answer, as I watched him in the distance, with his staff, of which he seemed to be the head. Standing near the purser, later on, I said to him, rather indifferently: “Who is that officer with the queer eyelids? He carries himself as if he owned the ship and all the passengers.”