CHAPTER XXIX A RUSSIAN PRINCESS
Mrs. Duff was awake by this time and Dallas, slipping off my back, went to sit down at a little distance from her and embraced her with adoring glances.
She smiled at him but said nothing and I went over to the fountain to get a drink.
When I came back she was asking him to please get her a handkerchief.
Oh! how delighted he was to have a mother to wait on. I followed along the grass by the veranda as he went to his room and fussed about a drawer to get the finest and whitest one he could for her.
He had found a dear gentle mother, but I guessed that he would have to wait on her. She was not active and stirring like Mrs. Devering and evidently had been accustomed to having everything done for her.
While the lad sat with eager eyes bent on the hammock and I stood discreetly among some seringas, I heard a step on the path behind me, and to my surprise saw another little woman, very much the type of Mrs. Duff.
This one was slight and graceful too, but much older than Mrs. Duff. She had a fine face and very grave sad eyes, and she was dressed in a severely plain walking suit.
Who was this? Oh! I knew. It was some guest from the Good American's for she had come down the trail by the Merry-Tongue River.
She paused beside me and gave me a slow thoughtful stare as if recognising my right to some attention, then she went on to the veranda.
Dallas stood up when he saw her and smiled but did not speak. His mother, however, rose up in her hammock with a glad cry of recognition and said in French, "Marie, is it you?"
The stranger went up to her and replied quietly in the same language, "You did not appear for lunch so I walked to see you."
Mrs. Duff, holding her by one hand, said to Dallas, "This is my dear friend Madame de Valkonski."
The boy bowed and offered his seat to this little lady, who sat down and looked at him attentively.
"So this is thy son," she said. "Does he understand French?"
Mrs. Duff blushed and made a helpless gesture. "Alas! I know so little about him. My son, canst thou speak French?"
"Not very well," he said. "I can speak better than I can understand."
"But you must learn to understand," said the lady with a pretty air of authority. "Every boy and girl should know French, especially here in this wonderful Canada. In my country—but do you know what my country is?"
"No, Madame," said my master.
"It is Russia—in that country we all learn French as children. If we speak to our parents in Russian they ask us to repeat the phrase in French."
The boy's face glowed. "Oh! Madame," he said, "if you are Russian will you speak to Bolshy?"
"And who is Bolshy?" asked the lady with an air of interest.
"His real name is Peter Glatzof, and he is a poor man who is very lonely, but he does not understand French."
A soft remark came from the hammock. "My amiable son, your Bolshy did not have a French governess when he was a child. Madame de Valkonski is a princess."
I held my breath, and my young master getting up made the newcomer a low bow. "A real live princess—how stunning! I've always wanted to see one."
She laughed a little queer short laugh. "Then go to Switzerland, young friend. Titles are as common as dust on the roads now that we are driven out of our homes—but tell me more about your Bolshy and tell me in French."
My master was pretty well puzzled, but he managed to give a stammering account of the Russian.
"Ah! this country of Canada is good to foreigners," said the strange lady in a slow way so that the lad might understand her. "It is better than any other country in the world. I have been looking into her laws—and has Madame, your Mother, told you about our experiment in your alluring mountains called Adirondacks?"
"I began," said Mrs. Duff, "but did not finish. Will you continue, Marie, if you please?"
The princess, whose words fell from her lips like pearls, said very evenly and distinctly, "You, though a boy only, know what has been going on in my beloved Russia."
Young Dallas nodded his head.
"Dear big boy," said his mother, "you must not nod, you must speak."
How his face glowed. Now he was like other boys and had his own mother to reprove and correct him.
His manner became quite roguish, and getting up from the stool where he was sitting he made a low bow and said, "Madame, my Mother and Madame the Princess—or perhaps I should say 'your highness'?"
"I beg of you," and the newcomer made a pretty gesture with one of her gloved hands, "'Madame' is quite sufficient."
"I can not read newspapers here very much," Dallas went on, "for we are galloping about all day like happy ponies and fall into our beds at night very tired, but I have heard the grown people say that Russia is in a terrible state."
"Yes, that is true," said Madame de Valkonski. "The populace is building up with one hand and tearing down with the other. If one did not wish to be killed one had to flee. Not only intelligent ones, but many pauper persons go to foreign lands. If they are like the Bolshy you speak of, how can they know what kind of a country they have come to unless someone tells them?—That is what we do, your mother and I. We bring bewildered ones to the mountains, and when they see the wildness and the trees they exclaim, 'A second homeland!' We tell them that they are under a good government. If they obey the laws and work hard they will be happy. We keep agitators away from them, and we take pains to teach them the language of their new home."
"How splendid in you!" said the boy. "I should like to help. May I?" and he turned to his mother.
"Certainly—we can start a junior class for you, but what will you teach?"
He looked puzzled, then his roving eye fell on me. "All about ponies," he said, "and how good it is for boys and girls to live out-of-doors and love trees and animals."
His mother's sweet hoarse laugh rippled out over the veranda. "My son shall be professor of equitation."
"And for ponies shall we have rails from your fences?" asked the princess.
"No," said Mrs. Duff in rather a proud way. "If my son takes a real interest in the children of our immigrants, we shall have real ponies."
I whinnied excitedly and they all looked at me and smiled.
A dreamy expression came over the princess' face and I felt that she knew I understood.
Head of a pony school—— Well! that was something to look forward to, and in my mind's eye I saw ahead of me years of usefulness in working for my country under my master's direction, for how could citizenship be better taught to young foreigners than by the aid of a patriotic pony school?
Dallas' mind was aflame over the possibilities of this scheme. I felt that he was thinking of a life-work for others—a thing that appealed strongly to his generous heart, but he was suddenly brought from the clouds of imagination down to solid practical earth by an anxious remark from his mother.
"Marie, you are missing your tea. Vous avez les yeux fatigués?"
Young Dallas sprang up. "I know what that means, my Mother. The Princess has fatigued eyes. I know how to make tea. Come on, Prince Fetlar."
"So you have a prince here," said Madame de Valkonski, turning to me.
Didn't I step proudly forward, make my best bow, and do a Russian folk dance step that I had learned in New York.
The princess was delighted, and congratulated me most warmly, saying that it was a pleasure to meet so accomplished a pony.
I bowed again and again. It was a perfect delight to me to take something out of my little bag of tricks here, for I was never forced to do anything that I did not wish to. All the Devering family had a horror of the cruelties usually connected with the training of animals in tricks unnatural to them.
While I stood scraping and bowing, I heard Mrs. Duff telling her friend that there were not skilled maids in this family as there were in the Good American's, but every child was taught how to do every bit of household work accomplished on the place.
The princess' weary face became interested, and when a few minutes later I returned, stepping carefully along the veranda, for I was harnessed to a tea-waggon, she indulged in a really hearty peal of laughter.
"But this is charming," she ejaculated, clapping her slender hands together. "Altogether charming!" and she took off her gloves.
Dallas had heaped the waggon high with every dainty he could find in the pantry, and the princess, who had evidently had little lunch, ate olives and honey and bread and chicken sandwiches and wound up with hot buttered toast from a plate that Bingi brought in.
He had heard us in the kitchen and had run down from the green cottage where he spent all his spare time with his pretty Japanese wife.
The princess poured the tea and she and Mrs. Duff drank theirs with lemon and sugar and no cream.
Dallas, with a hand shaking with excitement, gave his mother her cup and bending over the hammock murmured, "Funny little mother with her foreign ways."
She gave him a long deep glance. Ah! these two would never part again, and my pony heart was glad and not a bit jealous. I saw that a boy to be all-round and not lop-sided must have a mother and father too.
When I was released from the tea-table and was having my own cake and bread and butter and jam out by the seringas the whole family came sweeping down from the Widow Detover's.
"Oh! what a joy to see a tea-pot," exclaimed Mrs. Devering, sinking down on the veranda edge. "I am done out—such excitement."
"Bretta!" said Mrs. Duff, rising up in her hammock, "this is my friend, Madame de Valkonski."
"Pardon, Madame," said Mrs. Devering, stepping up on the veranda, "I did not see you. It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to our home. Jim, here is the princess," she said over her shoulder.
Mr. Devering took off his cap and held it in his hand, and Madame de Valkonski, slipping from the tea-table, went to sit down in a low chair that Mr. Devering placed beside the hammock.
I was amused at the thirsty Mrs. Devering, who was having the nice big black teapot drawn from her clinging hand.
"Nephew!" she said reproachfully to Dallas.
"My Aunt!" he exclaimed in his old-fashioned way. "Tannic acid has formed by this time. I would not injure you. I am going to make fresh tea."
Mrs. Devering was very fond of a joke, and rolled her eyes mischievously at the two other women. Then they all laughed, but I saw Mrs. Duff's eyes follow the retreating figure of the lad holding the tea-pot in his hand. Not only did she love him most fervently but what a treasure he would be to a woman who evidently did not care to wait on herself.
"I don't see," remarked Mr. Devering with a very wise air and after he had bitten deep into a sandwich, "why boys and men should not help women with household tasks. Big Chief here can make excellent pancakes, but he is rather ashamed of it. Come here, lad, and make your bow to the princess."
Big Chief, with quite an air of composure, put his heels together and bowed low. Then he got rattled and ran after his pal Dallas.
The other children were then brought up on the veranda and introduced to this stranger, who looked at each one attentively and kindly but with a face like a white mask. When they had all settled down and had begun to eat bread and butter she took a macaroon from the table and walked toward me.
I was shocked at the terrible expression of her face. She held the cake out kindly. She did not know or care whether I got it. "Oh! my heart, my heart!" she murmured in an agonized voice. "They stood him against that wall—they shot him, my Paul, my beloved boy."
I did not find out till later what she meant. She had been caught by the Reds in Russia with her nephew Paul. All the rest of the family had escaped. She was spared because she was a propriétaire who had years before given away half her estate to her peasants, but they shot the boy in her sight and these children reminded her of him.
Oh! how glad I was when I found this out, that my young master and his cousins lived in a free and happy land where no one shot poor innocent children.
When the princess returned to her seat the others were talking of the further excitement up at Widow Detover's. It seemed that Joe Gentles was so overcome by her upbraiding that he fainted dead away at her feet.
Then the Widow was sorry and screamed for Mr. Devering. He found her overcome because she had made Joe faint and Joe was overcome because he had set her kitchen on fire.
The Widow was crying and finally she said that it was too bad to require Mr. Devering to look after all the lame ducks in the settlement. Joe might bring his wife and child to live with her lonely self and she would pay him wages.
Mr. and Mrs. Devering were much pleased with this arrangement and Madame de Valkonski listened attentively to this interesting backwoods story.
Mrs. Duff had fallen asleep, and seeing this Mrs. Devering came over to the merry group of children and said in a low voice, "Please take your tea and cakes out on the lawn. Your aunt and the princess have not our steady backwoods nerves."
I kept one ear pricked toward the boys and girls and the other toward the grown-ups. The latter were on the Bolshy subject and I heard Mrs. Devering begging Madame de Valkonski to stay all night so that she would see him at the chapel in the morning.
The children did not listen to this conversation. They began to dance on the lawn and finally danced themselves up to the stable and throwing themselves on their ponies had a good gallop down the lake which lasted till supper time.
Dallas did not go with them. He and I remained near his mother, who slept till the bugle sounded for supper.
"I wonder," said my boy in a low voice, "I wonder how poor Bolshy will take all this. I imagine that he will be flabbergasted at the sight of this little bit of Russia," and he glanced admiringly at his mother's friend.