“Yes,” I assented; “but where is Zaidee? I thought she might bring me some news of Ivan.”
“She is busy cleaning up,” Alex said. “The house is a sight, and Monsieur Seguin is expected home. That dog had the run of everything—sleeping where he liked, but mostly on a silk lounge, where he has left his mark. We have had another meeting there.”
“You have!” I exclaimed, with a feeling of resentment that the mistress’ memory should be thus outraged. “Zaidee should not have allowed it.”
“She didn’t want to,” Alex said; “but the pressure was great, and she had to yield. And such a rabble as came! Even I was ashamed, and made a speech against it.”
“You did?” I said, smiling, as I fancied that old woman standing on a chair, as she said she had done, to harangue the crowd, threatening to report them to the master in some way, if the thing was repeated.
“Some of them hissed me,” she said, “and charged me with being a half and half—one half for the aristocrats and one half for my party. I tell you, nihilism is a hard road to travel!”
“Was Ivan there?” I asked. And she replied: “Yes; he was the big card, and he didn’t like it, and said so, and they hissed him. They are like shuttlecocks, some of them, shouting for the czar to-day and ready to kill him to-morrow, if the right leader could be found. It’s a volcano with a thin crust we are on.”
I looked at the woman in surprise at her language and manner. They did not agree with her appearance.
“Alex,” I said, “you have not always been what you are now?”
“Maybe not; but it is the present which tells,” she replied; and as just then Mrs. Browne’s voice came along the corridor, like a foghorn, calling for Alex, the old woman gathered up her dusters and left me in a maze of perplexity.