Dinner was at half-past seven. Mr. Holland took me down to the dining-room, a large hall brilliantly illuminated and filled with gentlemen in full dress and bare-shouldered ladies. We made our way to the prettily spread table reserved for us, decorated with bunches of roses. Both Mrs. Holland and Mrs. Olarowski had put on their finest dresses. Of all those present I was the only one to appear in a wrong toilet. My modest frock seemed rather out of place amidst the gorgeous plumes of the other ladies, and Mrs. Holland’s eyes swept over me disapprovingly. Nevertheless, I was a great deal stared at and much annoyed, for I felt I was being made a show of, and exhibited as one would exhibit a giant or a dwarf.
We meant to spend a fortnight in New York, but had to leave the city much sooner. When I came down to breakfast one morning, I perceived immediately that something unpleasant had happened. All my companions seemed very preoccupied and gloomy, and ate their breakfasts in silence. After our meal I began turning over the leaves of a daily paper which happened to be on the table close to my hand, and saw an article which made my blood run cold. It ran thus: “Siberia’s Governor-General on a visit here—in imminent danger!” And then I was told that the manager of our hotel had thought fit to warn my husband of the danger to which we were exposed. He had received an anonymous letter that morning, signed A Victim of Siberia, in which he was threatened that his hotel would be blown up for having sheltered us. Further on the letter ran thus: There is now stopping at your hotel a man who is the sworn enemy of thousands of persecuted men and women in far distant Siberia. He has very recently been appointed to the governor-generalship of that accursed spot, but he is a marked man by men of my belief in this country, the Mecca of all, the land of the free. I write this to warn you of a plot to destroy Doukhovskoy, who will now go to rule over the victims of the Tzar in Siberia. But I feel it my duty to warn you to be on your guard against certain members of an organisation of which I am a member. This letter was sent to the superintendent of the police and he has no doubt made preparations to prevent any attempt at assassination, or at any rate to arrest the assassin, which may not be much comfort to us if there really be a plot. Sergy, however, was not to be frightened easily, but of course I was horribly frightened. What woman would not have been? Another morning paper announced: General Doukhovskoy will be assassinated with his wife and suite. In any case he wouldn’t be allowed to reach Siberia, where he is appointed general-governor to martyrise the people. And though the New York Herald had printed in big black letters a headline six inches tall: General Doukhovskoy is safe, we felt ourselves condemned to death.
The first thing to be done was to get away from New York and take the afternoon train to Chicago. I packed in haste and spent a frantic half-hour in thrusting my things in my trunk. The Hollands had invited us to share their box with them at the opera that night, and had announced it in the papers. We telephoned to them that we were obliged to leave New York quite unexpectedly, having been called to Khabarovsk by wire. We also telegraphed to an American lady, who had invited us to visit at her house in Philadelphia, that we were leaving for Boston, in order that they couldn’t get on our track.
My husband acceded to my entreaties that for the rest of our journey through America we would not be “The Governor-General and his wife,” but a plain party of tourists. After my fright I will enjoy it all, particularly because I could see everything I wanted to see, and that I could not have done if we were pointed out here and there as “The Governor-General and his wife.” And thus Sergy changed his name and sent away his luggage; we will travel across the Continent incognito.
We got hastily into a tram to be driven to the railway station, but we were not destined to go off unobserved. A very unprepossessing-looking individual, with long hair and spectacles, sprang on the steps of the tram and asked Mr. Shaniavski, in very bad English, if General Doukhovskoy was leaving New York for good, Mr. Shaniavski stopping him from entering the car, answered that he knew nothing about General Doukhovskoy. At that very moment the tramway started and we were delivered from the obtrusive spy. At the railway-station Mrs. Serebriakoff and I didn’t permit our husbands to leave our sides, and struggled hard to seem unconcerned, mistrusting all the passengers.
CHAPTER LXI
NIAGARA FALLS
The way is long from New York to San Francisco. We have to pass the Continent from East to West, making about 5000 miles. It took thirty-five days to make that journey before the railway was built. We will touch Niagara on our way to Chicago, and will continue the journey the same day by a later train. To leave America without seeing the Falls of Niagara was impossible.
The train rattled out of New York and crossed the Harlem. We skirted that pretty little river and ran over the prairies. We travel in a splendid “Wagner Express,” a rival to “Pullman’s Express.” All the cars are first-class; it is only the so-named “Colonist trains” which are second-class. Our saloon-car had no compartments in it, there was just one wide corridor with velvet armchairs dotted about. In front of our engine a kind of giant spade is fastened to clear the line from droves of cattle and other encumbrances. A huge bell keeps ringing all the time for the same purpose.
Towards night we removed to the sleeping-car, fitted up with a long double file of two-storeyed bunks, the rows separated by a green calico partition. The railway conductors are shiny black negroes, surnamed “Johnny,” all of them. Our Johnny, a most jolly-looking nigger, in white livery, was very talkative, his tongue went like an express train. He plied us with questions and cross-examined us about where we came from, where we were going to. Wasn’t he also a spy? At all events we did not reveal our destination. We pretended we were going no further than Niagara. In the night Mme. Beurgier went to drink a glass of water, and when she crawled in, in the dark, she couldn’t find out her sleeping-berth, and got into Johnny’s couch. When her hands touched the darkie’s slippery face, she thought she had touched a frog, and throwing herself back, she bumped her face against the boards, at which her forehead instantly developed a bump of many colours.