myself per steamer as a saloon passenger, and made all necessary arrangements as to my luggage.
I shall now close this chapter, leaving it for the next to show what befel me on my arrival at the capital city of All the Russias.
CHAPTER II.
Every preparation having been made, I set out on my voyage, and arrived safely at St. Petersburg, and became regularly located in the house of Screwer, Grindem, & Co.
Before I took up my appointment, the management of the English department was carried on by a Scotchman, and his name was McDiddle. Andrew, or, as he himself pronounced it, Andree McDiddle, was a most unfavourable specimen of the Caledonian; in craft, cunning, and readiness for everything that might serve his own interests I think it would be impossible to surpass him. I never saw the man smile except at somebody being overreached; and next to the furs and sables, the great business of his life was to take and keep other people down. For myself, I had come to be my employer’s representative; but McDiddle was so well established by forty years’ sorting furs, and keeping the accounts, not to speak of spying and being consulted; he knew so much that I did not, and business was so differently conducted in St. Petersburg from what it was in London, that I settled into the subordinate position from the first hour of taking the seat at the desk assigned me. One day, about a month after I came, we were seated at our respective desks, when one of the opposite mirrors showed me that there was a lady in the office.
I would as soon have expected to see a bird of paradise as a female face in that establishment; all our tables were spread and our cuisine and laundry done by men; but there was a woman, dressed in what I instinctively knew to be the first fashion out of Paris, not thirty at the outside, with finely-moulded features for a Russian, a soft, fair complexion, light blue eyes, and hair of a golden yellow. She had come in so noiselessly that I was not aware of her presence till apprised by the mirror, and, still more astonishing, she was speaking to McDiddle. Their talk was low and earnest, and I must confess to listening; but they spoke in Russian. However, the eye sometimes does duty for the ear; by its help I discovered, to my great astonishment, that they were talking of myself. The lady looked at me now most graciously, and I acknowledged her presence with my best bow.
“Might I ask,” said the lady, “if you have been long in St. Petersburg?”
“Only a month,” said I.
“And how do you like it?”
“I have scarcely had time to know.”
“Ah!” she said; “it is true you English are sensible people, and do not make up your minds in a hurry. I have a great respect for the English.”
(By the bye, she spoke our language as well as I do myself.)
“I had a governess of your nation, the best creature in the world. What trouble she took to teach me the little English I know!”
“Her trouble was well bestowed, Madame,” said I, having by this time got up my courage and my manners; “you speak it like a native.”
“I did not know that Englishmen could flatter,” said the lady, with the sweetest smile; and before I had time to rebut the charge, she added, “But tell me how you like the society here.”
“I have seen very little as yet, Madame.”
“Ah, perhaps you have no friends or relations in the city.”
“None, Madame; I am quite a stranger.”
She looked at me so kindly, so sympathisingly, that I could have stood there for a fortnight; but, with another bow, to which the lady made a polite acknowledgment, I returned to my desk and began opening and shutting various books of samples.
From that day McDiddle changed in his manner towards me, and became quite familiar and communicative. He told me that she was the Countess Czarinski, a widow, rich, childless, and belonging to one of the first families in Esthonia. He further explained her coming to the warehouse by letting me know that it had been the Czarinski Palace, and that the seal-skins shipped for Messrs. Screwer, Grindem, & Co., had come from an estate most fertile in furs, which the Countess owned in the government of Archangel.
“It is not exactly her own,” said McDiddle, “but properly belongs to her nephew. She is his guardian, however, and that is nearly as good as ownership in Russia.”
Some days after this I was sitting, with the pen in my fingers, wondering if she would come again in my time, when there was a slight creak of the door, a light rustle of silk, the prettiest tinkle on the brass rail of the stove, and there stood Madame Czarinski.
“Ah, my English friend,” she said, smiling with her usual sweetness, as I presented myself, “how glad I am to see you once again! Shake hands; they always shake hands in your country; don’t they? My governess told me so. How I long to visit England!”
It is to be hoped I shook the small, lemon-coloured, kid-gloved hand with becoming grace and ardour. I know that I was intensely charmed. She inquired for Mr. McDiddle, and we got into conversation. As we had shaken hands, and she had such a respect for the English, I relieved my mind by telling her the exact truth, that I knew nobody, and nobody knew me; that I had not a soul to speak to except McDiddle. The lady seemed to enter into my feelings to a degree which enchanted me, young as I was.
“Far from your relations, and without friends in a strange city—it is a hard trial. And you can’t return to England without your employer’s permission, of course?”
“No,” said I; “and he is a man to whom I should not wish to complain of solitude.”
“Ah! those money-making old men think of nothing but business,” said the countess; “but, tell me, now, should you like to see society?”
“Your ladyship,” I replied, “I have never been accustomed to fashionable life. I am only a poor merchant’s clerk.”
“Yes; but you have a genteel air, and might be made presentable,” she said, surveying me