She threw back her head, and gave a delicious ripple of laughter. That rationing — what nonsense! It was gone long ago, in the country towns at least. It had failed miserably; the greedy peasants lied and cheated, always withholding secret stores. In the end it had been thought better to let them do as they would, although there were still heavy penalties in force against anyone who was discovered hoarding. The only redress that the Communists had was to charge them higher prices for the goods, which they could obtain only from the Co-operative Stores. For her it was simple — her little pupils liked her — the peasants, their parents, were her friends — she had but to ask and for her there was always plenty and to spare.
As she talked she was frying a great yellow omelette. Rex was roused from his short slumber, and soon they were all seated round the table enjoying this unexpected treat. De Richleau declared that it could not have been better cooked by Mère Poulard of the Mont St. Michael herself.
“Ah, Monsieur,” she answered, “the making of an omelette is one of the many things that I learnt from my poor mother.”
“Your mother is dead then, Mademoiselle?”
“Alas, yes — in the year of the great famine. It was terrible, that. I do not know how any of us survived.”
“May one ask why your mother came to settle in this wild place, so far from home?”
“It was Le Prince Shulimoff, Monsieur. My mother had known him many years — before even I was born. She was of gentle people but very poor, you understand. When I was five he offered her a position as companion to his niece. Never would he permit this niece to live in St. Petersburg or Moscow — here only, in the solitude of the great Château among the woods, and so we came to live in the Château, also. That was a year or so before the War.”
De Richleau nodded. “It is remarkable that you should have escaped in the years of revolution, Mademoiselle.”
She shrugged. “My mother was much respected in the town; all her interests were with the poor and sick. She was the Châtelaine — none but her and the little Princess Sophie and myself lived in the Château. And Monsieur le Prince, he was a strange man. On his occasional visits to us he would sneer at her charities one day, and give her great sums of what he called ‘sin money’ the next, to spend as she would. When the troubles came there were many to protect my mother. She had, too, the great courage, she feared to go nowhere, and she organized the hospital — nursing Reds and Whites alike.”
“Would the Château be any great way from here,” asked Rex, who had been listening intently.