CHAPTER IV.
NICOL’S HOUSE.
We had been told that the time to visit St. Petersburg was in the winter, when the city is in its glory. The nobility have then returned from their summer homes. The czar is at his palace. The Nevsky Prospect is gay with equipages of every description, from the common sledge to the carriages of the aristocracy, while the Neva, frozen to the thickness of three or four feet, rivals the Nevsky, with its crowds of sledges and skates and lookers-on, its colored lights, its bazaars and booths filled with a laughing crowd till long after the coachmen and horses, who have stood for hours in the cold before the Winter Palace, where a ball was in progress, have gone home.
All this I saw later, and was a part of most of it during my second visit to St. Petersburg; but now, not knowing the difference, I was satisfied to be there in the summer, although the streets seemed deserted, and most of the great houses were closed, or left in charge of a few old domestics, who were faithful to their trust as watchdogs. The czar, with his family, was at Gatschina, in the great, gloomy palace, where I was told that, although there were six hundred rooms, the royal family confined themselves to only six, as they could thus feel more secure from attacks of nihilists. Whether this was true or not, I do not know. One hears many wonderful rumors in St. Petersburg of plots and counterplots, and prying gendarmes, and arrests and banishment to the fortress or Siberia; but these did not concern us. We were there to see, and we made good our time, going everywhere we could go, and pushing our way into some places which at first seemed impossible to enter.
And nearly always Chance was with us. Just where he came from I did not at first know. We usually found him outside the hotel waiting for us, and attaching himself to me as if I were his mistress. His master we did not see until the fifth day, when we met him in front of the house where Nicol Patoff had once lived. I remembered the number on the card Nicol had given me, and was anxious to visit it alone, to inspect it at my leisure, and possibly ring the bell boldly, and ask if the Patoff family were at home. But this I could not do, for, as I was the only one who spoke the language, it seemed necessary that our party should keep together.
Still, I must see the house, and give it more than a passing glance, and at last I took the ladies into my confidence, telling them why I wished particularly to see the place. None of them had ever heard of Nicol, except the girls from Ridgefield, and, as these were much younger than myself, they only knew of him as some one who taught in the academy for a time and then disappeared. They were, however, ready to go with me, and on a sunny afternoon we started along the Nevsky on our tour of discovery, with our escort, Chance, who seemed to know just where we were going, and forged ahead at a rapid pace until he reached the Patoff house, where he stopped and waited for us to come up.
It was very large, and built of brick, as are most of the houses in St. Petersburg. In front was the inevitable porter, or servant, of the proprietor, who keeps guard over the premises and over all who come in or go out. The one of our party most interested in Nicol Patoff after myself was Mary, my roommate, who was usually bubbling with enthusiasm, and who thought it would be great fun if we could get inside a real Russian house, and see what it was like.
“Aren’t you going to ask that porter if Mr. Patoff lives here? He looks harmless and sleepy,” she said, while Chance was making various signs that he expected us to enter.
What I might have done I do not know, if upon the scene a new actor had not appeared, in the person of the gendarme Michel, who came upon us rather suddenly, as we stood huddled together on the sidewalk. There was no mistaking the pleasure on his face when he saw us.
“Good-afternoon!” he said, speaking in English. “Sight-seeing, I suppose? What place are you bound for now, if I may ask? I hope you find Chance a good escort. I tell him every morning to find Miss Harding, and he goes;” and he patted the head of the beautiful dog, who began to leap upon him, with little cries of delight.
This, then, was the reason why Chance always came to me when he appeared at the hotel. My handkerchief, which the gendarme still kept, was the cue which guided him, and I ought to have been flattered, but I was not, for I always felt as if there was something sinister behind the officer’s attentions which I could not fathom. It was Mary who replied, in her breezy way:
“Chance is splendid; he goes with us everywhere, and just now we are looking at the house where Nicol Patoff used to live, and where, perhaps, he lives now.”
I tried to catch her eyes, and stop her, but she was turned partly from me, and went on: “Do you know who lives here?”
“Not Patoff,” the gendarme said, with the same expression I had seen on his face when I spoke of Nicol on the boat. Then he added, quickly: “Do you, too, know Nicol Patoff?”
“Oh, no,” Mary replied. “I was a little girl when he taught in Ridgefield. Miss Harding was his favorite pupil, and that is why she speaks Russian so well. I have heard he was a splendid-looking man, with an air of mystery about him. Some thought him a nihilist. Do you know him, and was he a nihilist?”
I gave a gasp as I waited for the answer, which was spoken very deliberately: “He was a nihilist, and has given me a great deal of trouble.”
“Are you trying to find him?” was Mary’s next remark. “Why don’t you put Chance on his track?”
I was very fond of the girl, but I could have throttled her to hear her speaking thus of Nicol Patoff, and suggesting that Chance be put to find him.
“Mary!” I exclaimed. “Are you crazy, to suggest so diabolical an act? Nicol Patoff was a gentleman! What has he done to you that you should wish to throw him into the hands of his foes, and have him condemned, unheard, and sentenced either to the fortress or to Siberia, where every foot of the soil has been wet with the tears of exiles, some guilty, of course, but more innocent!”
“Madame is very eloquent in her defense of Nicol Patoff, and her tirade against our government,” the gendarme said, and I answered:
“Eloquent for the right, you mean! Nicol Patoff was my friend, and incapable of crime, unless it was that of detesting your atrocious government, which I do most heartily. I am glad I am an American, and not a Russian, subject to your laws!”
Womanlike, I was half crying, and my voice sounded croaky, and I hated myself for it, and hated the gendarme, who was certainly laughing at me, while my companions stood aghast, wondering what would be the result of my outburst. We had nothing to fear, for however stern and uncompromising the gendarme might be in the discharge of his duty, he was very kind to us, and, after I ceased speaking, he said: “If I ever find Patoff, and I may do so, I will tell him your opinion of him and our government. It will please him vastly, if all I know of him is true.”
“What do you know of him?” I demanded. “You have questioned us about him, and now I ask you, what has he done?”
“Nothing which I can tell you now,” was the good-humored reply. “I can only tell you what you probably know—that this is the house you are looking for, but no Patoffs live here now.” He hesitated a moment, then added: “It belongs to my family—to me! Would you like to go in?”
We had stood upon the sidewalk so long that the few passers-by began to look at us curiously and with suspicion, as if the presence in our midst of a gendarme boded evil to some of us, and one or two stopped to see what would follow. It was to me that Michel had addressed his invitation, and before I could answer and decline, as I meant to do, although I wished very much to see Nicol’s old home, he said: “It is perfectly proper for you to do so. Tourists not infrequently visit private houses when the owner is gone—for a compensation, of course. In this case there is no compensation. The owner is here, and invites you to enter. Will you come?”
“Yes, Miss Lucy, do. It will be something to tell at home,” Mary entreated, while Chance leaped upon me and then ran ahead, as if he were adding his invitation to his master’s.
I could not well resist, and gave a rather unwilling assent, wondering whom we should meet inside—what woman, I meant. This question was soon settled by the gendarme, who said, as he ushered us into a long reception room, which, to my Yankee eyes, looked untidy and uncared for: “You must excuse whatever is amiss, and I am afraid there is a great deal out of order, according to your code of housekeeping. I am just now living a bachelor’s life, as my mother has gone into the country for the summer, and Russian servants are not like the Yankees. I don’t suppose the house has all been swept since she went away. Now, what would you like to see most?” he asked, as we stood looking around us rather awkwardly.
“Oh, everything,” Mary replied; “the bedrooms and the kitchen. I’ve heard the latter was awful; not yours, especially, but everybody’s.”
She was certainly irrepressible and rude, and I tried to stop her, but the gendarme, who seemed pleased with her sprightliness, laughed good-naturedly, and said: “You are right, I think, and a Russian kitchen is a terror, particularly when the mistress is gone, and Chance and I keep house. As to bedrooms, my mother and I are civilized enough each to have one, but in some grand houses the master and mistress ignore such trivial things as bedrooms, and sleep on couches improvised as beds, while the servants sleep on the floor, or where they can find a place.”
“Horrible!” was Mary’s exclamation, as she held up her short dress, as if fearful of contamination.
Evidently the gendarme was proud of his house, leaving the kitchen out of the question. That we did not see, nor madame’s bedroom, nor his; but he took us through suites of rooms on the walls of which were some fine pictures, while the massive furniture had once been very handsome and costly. But the heavy brocade upholsterings were faded and frayed; the solid rosewood and mahogany tables and chairs were tarnished and scratched; there was dust everywhere, and one of the small, silken couches was evidently Chance’s bed, when he chose to make it so, for he sprang upon it and lay down, with his tongue lolling and his eyes watching us intently.
“I think it awful untidy. Where are the servants, I wonder?” Mary said to me, in a low tone, but not so low that the gendarme did not hear her, and reply: “I think it is rather untidy, but mother will soon right it up when she comes; she is a raging housekeeper. As to servants, there are plenty of them, such as they are. I dare say the most of them are asleep in the sunshine.”
Up to this time I had said but little. Something was choking me, as I went through the rooms where Nicol used to live, and I tried to imagine him there, with his fastidious ideas and his dainty dress, free from spot or blemish.
“It must have been different then,” I thought, and I said: “Mr. Patoff told me they sometimes had as many as forty servants in his day.”
“Oh, yes,” the gendarme replied. “No doubt of it. I think we at one time had sixty, before the emancipation of the serfs, when labor cost nothing.”
“Sixty!” Mary repeated. “Why, at home if we have one we do well. What did sixty do?”
“I hardly know,” the gendarme answered her. “I think they fell over each other, and quarreled, mostly, and only did one thing, and then their duties were over for that day. We have fewer servants now and better service.”
Mary arched her eyebrows, as she looked around for signs of service, and finally wrote with her finger the word “shiftless” in the dust which lay thickly on the highly polished surface of a handsome inlaid table. If the gendarme saw it, he made no sign, but took us to the next floor through other rooms filled with old and expensive furniture, but in none of which I could have sat down with a homelike feeling. I was beginning to get tired, and showed it, when he said: “I must take you to my den, and then I am through.”
He opened a door into a large, airy room looking out upon the Nevsky and the Neva.
“This is something like it!” Mary exclaimed, pirouetting across the floor and seating herself in a large easy-chair near the window. “This is like home,” and she looked around her admiringly.
“I am glad you like it. I come here to rest after a worry with passports and nihilists,” the gendarme said, with a look which was lost on me.
My attention had been attracted from the first by a full-length portrait of a young man hanging over the mantel.
“Nicol Patoff!” I exclaimed, clasping my hands with a firm grip, and feeling the tears spring to my eyes, as my thoughts went back to the old schoolroom, the lessons learned there, and the handsome young Russian whom this portrait brought so vividly to my mind.
It must have been taken before he came to America, when he was not more than twenty, but there was no mistaking the fair, smooth face, the lines of the mouth just breaking into a laugh, or the expression of the soft, brown eyes, with that far-away look in them.
“You recognize it?” the gendarme said, and I answered, quickly: “Recognize it! Of course I do! I should know Nicol wherever I met him, whether in his old home or in the wilds of Siberia. He was younger when this was taken than when I knew him. He is an old man now.”
“Yes, very old,” the gendarme replied, sarcastically. “Forty-five, at least. Old enough to die, if he is not already dead.”
By this time my companions had crowded around the picture, commenting upon it and wondering where the original was, and how his portrait came into the possession of the Seguins. It was Mary, as usual, who asked direct questions.
“Funny his portrait should be here, if he had anywhere to put it. How came you by it, and where is he?” she asked.
The gendarme did not answer at once, but seemed to be considering what to say. Then he suddenly grew very communicative.
“As you are so interested in the Patoffs, and some of you knew Nicol,” he said, “I may tell you that the family was once very wealthy, but reverses came, and they sold this house to us, with all there was in it. They were leaving the city for Constantinople, and did not care to take anything with them. Some time they might return, they said, but they never have.” He was sitting near an old-fashioned writing desk of mahogany, and, putting his hand upon it, he continued: “This was Nicol’s desk, and in it are some souvenirs he must have picked up in America, and perhaps forgot to take with him, or intended to come back for them. There is a dollar greenback, a fifty-cent piece, a little silk flag with stars and stripes, and——!” he hesitated a moment, and then went on: “In a small, pearl box, and tied with a white ribbon, is a long curl of hair—a woman’s hair. Please let me open that window. You look faint, and it is very warm here,” he said, breaking suddenly from his talk of Nicol’s treasures, and raising a sash behind me, as he saw me gasp for breath.
The cool air from the river revived me, or I should have fallen, the atmosphere grew so thick and the room so black as I saw myself a young girl, under the maple tree, giving a lock of my hair to Nicol Patoff, who had seemed so eager to get it, and who had cared so little for it as to leave it with strangers when the house was sold.
“You do look spotted and queer, and it is awful hot in here,” Mary said, fanning me with her hat; then, turning to the gendarme, she continued: “A lock of hair, a greenback, a fifty-cent piece and a flag! There is a romance hidden in this desk. What is the color of the hair?”
She looked at my heavy braids, but her countenance fell when the gendarme replied: “Black as night!”
I knew he lied, but blessed him for it, feeling sure that he guessed on whose head the hair once grew, and wished to spare me from Mary’s badinage.
She was very young and irrepressible, and went on: “Funny he should have left them, unless he had to run away. Can we see them?”
“Certainly not,” he replied. “It was wrong in me to speak of them, perhaps, and it would be a greater wrong to show them.”
“I guess you are right,” Mary said, while I made a move toward the door.
The sight of Nicol’s picture, and the mystery attending him, had affected me strangely, making me faint and sick, and I longed to be in the fresh air outside.
“You will stay for a cup of tea? Ludovic will prepare it at once, and we have some rare old china,” the gendarme said, but I declined the tea, and hurried from the room. As we emerged from the gloomy vestibule into the summer sunshine, the gendarme said to me, in a tone too low for even Mary to hear: “You have seen Nicol Patoff’s old home. Could you ever have lived here with him?”
He had no right to ask me such a question, and I felt my face grow red and my hair prickle at the roots, as I answered, promptly: “Never with him, nor anyone else!”
Why I added the last clause I do not know. There had been no reference to my living there with anyone but Nicol, and that was an impossibility. The gendarme laughed, and said: “Yankee habits and Russian customs would not affiliate well, I am sure. It is better for you to be as you are, and Nicol as he is.”
“Where is he, and of what is he suspected?” I asked, looking the officer square in his face, while his lids drooped lower over his eyes, and the ridge on his forehead grew deeper.
“It is too long a story, and madame would believe nothing against Nicol, if I told her,” he said.
He seemed to take my liking for Nicol for granted, and it made me angry, but my reply was to thank him for his courtesy in showing us the house, saying I knew my companions had enjoyed it, and that some of them would undoubtedly make it a subject for a paper for some of the clubs to which they belonged.
“Clubs, yes!” he rejoined, with animation. “I hear your country is full of them. And of societies called for letters of the alphabet, ‘D. A. R.’s,’ and ‘G. A. R.’s,’ and ‘Y. M. C. A.’s’ and ‘W. C. T. U.’s,’ and ‘Y. P. S. C. E.’s,’ and a host more. I got an American to give me the list, and what they all meant, and tried to commit it to memory, but gave it up. I’d like to see an article any of you might write on our house. I hope you will omit the general untidiness. It is better when mother is at home,” he said, with a bow, as he bade us good-by, saying we were welcome to call again whenever we chose. The old porter knew us now for friends, and would let us in at any time.
“I don’t know why we should ever care to go into that old house again, smelling of must and rats. Forty servants! And I don’t think the windows had been washed this summer, or the big salon dusted,” was Mary’s comment, as we walked rapidly toward our hotel, for it was getting near dinner time.
During the next week we scoured St. Petersburg as well as eight women without a guide could scour it, and by some means gained access to places which our whilom conductor, Henri, who still lounged at the hotel, told us were impossible to be seen without permits from the highest authorities. We had no permits, and just walked in, as a matter of course.
Everything seemed to give way to us, and we went about far more fearlessly, I think, than the czar, when he occasionally drove into town, with his armed police beside him. We had no guards—even Chance had deserted us, and we saw nothing of him or his master after the day we visited the Patoff house. We passed the place two or three times, and always stopped a moment to look at it, but there was nothing attractive in its gloomy, shut-up appearance. The master was evidently absent from the city, and I was not willing to admit that I missed him; but I did, and missed Chance more, feeling always a sense of security when he was with us.
But this did not prevent us from going wherever the fancy took us—sometimes on the beautiful river, Neva, the glory of the city; sometimes in droskies, which were not so terrible as the first one I had tried; but oftener on foot, feeling sure that our numbers and nationality protected us, and gaining courage and daring, until suddenly confronted with an experience we had not counted upon.