“I want you to take me to Siberia.”
“To Siberia? You?” I repeated in astonishment.
“Yes. I hear you are going. Any news affecting us travels rapidly. I—I have an intense desire to see what the country beyond the Urals is like.”
“Who told you I was going?”
“I’m not at liberty to say,” she replied. “All I ask is that I may be allowed to accompany you. I have here sufficient money to defray the cost of my journey;” and she drew from the breast of her dress a large packet of Russian bank-notes.
I shook my head, replying that Siberia was no place for a delicately-reared woman, and pointed out the uninviting prospect of a winter journey of five thousand miles in a sleigh. “Besides,” I added, “your connection with the Terrorists would render it unsafe for you to return to Russia; and, again, there are les convenances to be studied.”
“Do you think that I, a Russian, am afraid of a cold sleigh journey?” she asked earnestly, after a few moments’ silence. “Scarcely! Of course, I should not travel in this dress, but would assume the disguise of a Russian lad, in order to act as your servant and interpreter. As for les convenances”—and, shrugging her shoulders, she pulled a little grimace, and added, “Bah! we are not lovers!”
I asked for news of her father, but she informed me that he was in Zurich. She refused to give me her address, and all argument was useless. The point she urged, that she would be companion and interpreter combined, impressed me, and ere I had finally promised, she had given me instructions that I should, in applying for my passport from the Russian Embassy, also make application for one for “Ivan Ivanovitch, servant.”
Four evenings later, I was on the platform at Charing Cross Station, watching my big iron-bound trunks being stowed away into the Continental express, and chatting to two old Fleet Street friends, who had come to see the last of me, when a rather short young man, enveloped in a long, heavy ulster, approached, and, touching his cap respectfully, said—
“Good-evening, sir. I hope I’m not late.”