Alex. Syv."
33
Sunday she came back from the trip. I felt quite lonesome all of this week. Two men were with her: one—a Russian, the silent type, with a big hat, who was taking care of the horse: the other, a tall, broad faced Anglo-Saxon fellow, whose bronzed face would be appropriate in the tropics but not on the white steppes of Siberia. A little longhaired pony brought the trio in a fancy sledge early in the morning. The Englishman (his name is Stanley) started to work with the radio, silent, serious, smoking a short black pipe. He took me for Lucie's servant. If I had had any doubt of his nationality, I never could have mistaken his tobacco: Navy Cut,—the one make I can't tolerate. He filled our small house with blue clouds of stink. When they all came I ran to the sledge, but from a distance Lucie signaled to me with her eyes that no tender expressions were needed. She sent me out for food, then to a drug store, then to the post-office, etc., etc. I obeyed.
So around noon I went to see the Princess. They all make me sick, especially since the L. tragedy. "If God does not help—we cannot." A certain Mme. K-v is now hanging around her. A suffragette—that's what she is. She said "some women are now here—we know nothing about …" alluding of course to me. I hardly could wait until evening.
It was evening when S. finished connecting the kitchen station with the city current. When I came home he and the Russian were trying to harness the pony. The poor little horse was choking from the smoke of his pipe and trying to bite the torturer.
"Say, Lucie," the Englishman said to her, as shivering in my overcoat, she came out to say good-bye to him, "the benzine is in the barn, over there under the hay. Tell your man to be careful and not to smoke around here."
"If it did not explode after your pipe, sir," I replied in my best
Shakespearian, "my cigarette won't do any harm. So don't be alarmed."
It took him about half a minute to digest the fact that I could understand his cockney. Lucie became almost hysterical with laughter and ran into the house.
Then he made a serious face and sprang into the sledge and the Russian flicked the horse with the whip. Near the corner, I saw him say something to the Russian and they turned back.
"Say," the Englishman asked, "are you English? Or Canadian, I fancy?"