“You will, of course, show this letter to your aunt,” Michel wrote, “and tell her she is not forgotten, and that I have only to mention her name to Chance, telling him to find her, when he springs up, racing all over the house, and, if the door is open, rushing into the street, in his mad search for her; and, when he fails, he comes back and puts his head in my lap, with a sorry, human look in his eyes, as if asking where she is, and why she does not come. I ask that, too, sometimes. I am very lonely now, as mother is in Monte Carlo, with Zaidee, who is growing to be a tall girl, quite unlike the frowzy head to whom your aunt gave her hat. That hat is still in existence, hanging in Zaidee’s room, in place of an icon, I verily believe. The girl says she does not believe in icons. She believes in the religion of the United States, and when I asked her which one, telling her there were many creeds and isms there, she promptly answered: ‘Miss Harding’s religion, of course.’
“She was a little, wizened-up old woman, painted and powdered.”
“I have heard of Ivan—that he is doing well and feeling well. His sister has been to St. Petersburg to dispose of the furniture of the house. Some of it she sold, some was rented with the house, and some she stored, in case her mother should return, which is doubtful, as she is very feeble. Tell your aunt that I bought the square table at which she was playing cards when I came looking for Ivan. I hardly know why I bought it, when our house is full of tables, but I did, and it has a place in what I call my den. Tell her, too, that I am writing on Nicol Patoff’s desk, and that I know no more of him now than when she was here. Your sister was a beautiful little girl. Give her my love, if she cares to take it from an old man like me. And give it to your auntie, too. I always think of her as a girl, she looks so young. Tell her that the old drosky man, who, the winter she was here, was keeping his bones warm in his mud hut on the plains, has come back, with a new establishment and new horse, and loudly laments that he did not have the pleasure of driving little madame. He thinks he lost a great deal—not so much in kopecks as in honor. He took Zaidee out one day, rather against his will, as he remembered the touzle-haired girl who had your aunt’s hat, and hardly thought it fit that she should ride in his new drosky, even if she is transformed into a fine-looking girl, with a tongue in her head, he said, and a devil in her eyes! He nearly upset her, he drove so fast, and she was glad to escape with whole bones. Zaidee is what you call a case—a rank nihilist at heart, I believe, but she covers it so well that mother does not suspect. If she did, she would not tolerate the girl a moment. She is death on anarchy of any kind.”
There was more in the same strain, and Jack did not think much of the letter as a whole. It was more for me, he said, than for himself, and I’d better answer it. But I didn’t, and time went on, and Russia seemed to me far in the past, and as something I should never see again, when, in the summer two years after our winter’s experience, I was there again, the companion, or guest, of a lady who took me with her because I could speak the difficult language. There was no Sophie Scholaskie with us this time—no M. Seguin at the frontier. Instead, there were plenty of officials, rather brusque and rough, as they examined our baggage and passports and scrutinized me curiously, as if they had seen me before, and wondered why I was there so often. I wondered, too, before the long, dreary journey came to an end, and St. Petersburg, with its gilded dome and spires and palaces, loomed into sight. Then I began to feel at home, for I knew nearly every foot of the great city, and I recognized some of the officials whom I had seen before. The hotel did not suit my friend, who wished for a more quiet place, and, after a few inquiries, we found it by a strange chance in the very house where the Scholaskies had lived, and where M. Seguin had come searching for Ivan.
CHAPTER XV.
MRS. BROWNE.
It was a boarding house, kept by a Mrs. Browne, an English woman, who had seen better days, as she constantly reminded her boarders, whom she preferred to call guests. She was particular to impress upon her guests that she spelled her name with a final “e.” That was more aristocratic! Many of her boarders were away, and for this reason, perhaps, I was offered as a sitting room the one where madame had received us and we had played whist with Sophie. I could almost have sworn that some of the furniture was the same, especially the chair in which madame had sat, clutching the arms so tightly, with a look of terror on her face which I could see so plainly, and a kind of creepy feeling came over me, as if the place were haunted.
“Yes, this is very nice,” I said; “but have you no other rooms I can look at?”
Mrs. Browne was a woman with a square jaw, and it fell at once, as she repeated, “Other rooms? Yes; but the likes of you don’t want them. Ain’t you an American, and don’t they always want the best? What ails the room? It has been occupied by nobility!”
I saw that she must be conciliated, and hastened to assure her that the room was all that could be desired by nobility or Americans.