CHAPTER II THE PRINCESS SYLVIA
Katherine did not know whether she was more astonished or relieved at thesudden flight of the man on the stairs. "I suppose I do look prettywild," she reflected, "but I didn't suppose my appearance was enough tomake a man run on sight. Well anyhow, he isn't going to trouble me, andthat's some comfort. Now to find the singer."
There was an open transom over the door before which Katherine stood andshe perceived that the voice came through this. With hand raised to knockon the door panel she paused in admiration. The song that floated throughthe transom had such a gay swing, such an irresistible lilt, that it sether head awhirl and her blood racing madly through her veins in a wildMay dance. It was as though Spring herself, intoxicated with May dew andbrimming over with all the joy of all the world, were singing. Likegolden drops from a sunlit fountain the gay, glad notes showered down onher:
"_Hark, hark, the lark at heaven's gate sings,_ _And Phoebus 'gins arise_ _His steeds to water at those springs_ _On chaliced flower that lies;_ _And winking Mary buds begin_ _To ope their golden eyes,_ _With everything that pretty been,_ _My lady sweet arise!_"
The voice fell silent, and Katherine came back to herself and knocked onthe door.
"Come in, my dear Duchess," called a merry voice from behind the door.There was no mistaking the note of glad welcome.
Katherine turned the knob and opened the door. Only darkness greeted hereyes.
"Where are you?" she asked.
From somewhere in the room came a sudden exclamation of surprise.
"Who is it?" demanded the voice which had bidden her enter. "You are notmy lady-in-waiting, the Duchess."
"I'm afraid I'm not," said Katherine, considerably puzzled at thesalutation she had received. She stood still inside the door trying tolocate her mysterious hostess in the darkness. Her flashlight lay in herhand, useless, its battery burned out.
"I'm looking for another house on another hill," she began hurriedly,speaking into the darkness and feeling as though she had slipped into theArabian Nights, "and I got the wrong hill and and now I'm so mixed up Idon't know where to go. I heard you singing and came in to ask if youcould tell me where the other hill is. I knocked before I came in," sheadded hastily, "but you didn't come to the door, so I took the liberty ofwalking in. I beg your pardon for coming right in that way, but I was socold----"
"You are welcome in our lodge," interrupted the invisible voice withlofty graciousness. "Do you not know where you have come?" it continued,in a tone which indicated there was a delicious surprise in store. "Thisis the royal hunting lodge, and I am the Princess Sylvia!"
"Oh-h-h!" said Katherine, too much astonished to say another word. Shedid not know how to act when introduced to a princess.
"Is there anything I can do for your majesty?" she asked politely,remembering that the other had mentioned a lady-in-waiting that sheseemed to be expecting.
"Light the lights!" commanded the voice imperiously.
Katherine took a step forward uncertainly. "Where--" she began.
"On the table beside you!" continued the voice.
Katherine put out her hand and came in contact with the edge of a table,and after groping for a moment found a box of matches. She struck one andby its flare saw an oil lamp standing on the table beside the matches.She lit it and looked around the room curiously. She could not see theowner of the voice at first. The room was large and shadowy and containedvery little furniture. A bare pine table on which the lamp stood; acouple of kitchen chairs; a cot bed next to the wall; a small stove; arocking chair and a sewing machine; these were the objects which the lampilluminated. The other end of the room lay in deep shadow. It was fromthis shadow that the voice now issued again.
"Bring the lamp and come here," it commanded.
Katherine picked up the lamp from the table and advanced toward theshadowy corner of the room. The darkness fled before her as she advancedand the corner sprang into light. She saw that the corner was a bay, withthree long windows, in which stood a couch. On the couch was a mountainwhose slopes consisted of vari-colored piecework, and from whose peakthere issued, like an eruption of golden lava, a tangle of bright yellowcurls which framed about a pair of big, shining eyes. The eyes were setin a face, of course--they had to be--but the face was so white andemaciated as to be entirely inconspicuous, so Katherine's firstimpression consisted entirely of hair and eyes. The eyes were dark brown,a strange combination with the fair hair, and sparkled with a hundredlittle dancing lights, as the girl on the couch--for it was a girlapparently about fourteen years old--looked up at Katherine with aroguish smile.
"You must be Her Grace, the Marchioness St. Denis," she said with an airof stately courtesy, "of whose presence in our realm we have beeninformed. I trust Your Grace is not over fatigued. You will pardon theinformality of our life here," she continued, her brown eyes travelingaround the room and resting somewhat regretfully on the shabbyfurnishings. "We take up our residence in the Winter Palace for stateoccasions," she went on, "but for our daily life we prefer the simplicityof our Hunting Lodge. We are less hampered by formal etiquette here."
Katherine stared in perplexity. Winter Palace? Hunting Lodge? Her Gracethe Marchioness? What was this strange child talking about? Her feelingof having wakened in the midst of a fairy tale deepened.
"You can see the Winter Palace from the window here, when there isn't anyfrost on it," proceeded the "princess," setting up a volcanic disturbanceinside the patchwork mountain by turning herself inside of it, and shepointed toward one of the bay windows with a thin white hand. "It's ontop of a high hill and at night it twinkles."
It came over Katherine in a flash that possibly it was Nyoda's house thatthis queer child meant by the "Winter Palace." A big house set on a highhill----
A rippling laugh caused her to look down hastily, and there was the girlon the couch fairy convulsed with laughter.
"It's been such fun!" she exclaimed, demolishing the mountain by throwingthe quilt aside with a sudden movement of her arms and disclosing aslender little body wrapped in a grayish woolen dressing gown. "I neverhad anybody from outside to play it with before. I get tired playing italone so much, and Aunt Aggie is mostly always too busy to play it withme. Besides," she said with a regretful sigh, "she has no imagination,and she forgets most of the really important things. Oh, it was wonderfulwhen you said, 'Is there anything I can do for you, Your Majesty?' It wasjust as real as real!" She laughed with delight at the remembrance.
Katherine, as much startled by the swift change in her little hostess asshe had been at her strange manner of speech in the beginning, was stilluncertain what to say. "Is it a game?" she asked finally.
The girl nodded and began to explain, talking as though to an old friend.
"You see," she began, "not being able to walk, it's so hard to findanything really thrilling to do."
"You are lame?" asked Katherine with quick sympathy. It had just comeover her that while the slender arms had been waving incessantly inanimated gestures as the voice chattered gaily on, the limbs under thedressing gown had not moved.
The girl nodded in reply to Katherine's question. "Crippled," sheexplained. "I was following a horse down the middle of the street tryingto figure out which leg came after which when I slipped and fell and hurtmy spine, and I have never walked since."
"Oh-h!" said Katherine with a shudder of distress.
"And so," continued the girl, "to pass away the time while Aunt Aggie wasworking I began to pretend that I was a princess and lived in a palacewith my indulgent father, the king, and had a grand court and a greattrain of attendants--all dukes and duchesses and counts and things, and aroyal grand duchess for my lady-in-waiting. That one is Aunt Aggie, ofcourse, and it's great fun to pretend she's the duchess."
"'My dear Duchess,'" she cried, giving an animated sample of her makebelieve, "'what do you say to having our cousin, the Crown Prince, in totea!' Then Aunt Agg
ie always forgets and says, 'Let's see, which one isthe Crown Prince, now?' It's _very_ disconcerting, the way the GrandDuchess forgets her royal relations!" She giggled infectiously andKatherine smiled too.
"What is your real name, Princess Sylvia?" she asked.
"Sylvia Deane," replied the girl. "Only the princess part is made up. Myname is S-s-ylvia-a."
Her teeth began to chatter on the last words and she drew the quilt uparound her tightly. Katherine suddenly felt cold, too. Then she becameconscious for the first time that there was no heat in the room. In thefirst contrast to the biting wind outside the place had seemed warm, andwith her heavy fur-collared winter coat she had not felt chilly. Sheglanced at the stove. It was black and lifeless.
"The f-f-fire's g-g-gone o-u-t," chattered Sylvia, huddling under thequilt as a fierce blast rattled the panes in the bay windows. Katherinefelt hot with indignation at the thought of the invalid left all alone inthe cold room.
"Where is your--lady-in-waiting?" she asked, a trifle sharply.
"Aunt Aggie's gone to the city," replied Sylvia. "She went at six o'clockthis morning and she was going to back at noon. She hasn't come yet, andI'm so cold and----"
She checked herself suddenly and held her head up very stiffly.
Katherine turned abruptly and made for the stove. It was a smallold-fashioned cook stove, the kind that Katherine had been familiar within her childhood on the farm. Beside it in a box were several lumps ofcoal and some kindling. She stripped off her gloves and set to workbuilding a fire. When the stove had begun to radiate heat she liftedSylvia, quilt and all, into the rocking chair and drew it up in front ofthe fire.
"And now, if you'll tell me where things are I'll prepare your Majesty'ssupper," she said playfully.
"Thank you, but I'm not hungry," replied Sylvia.
"I don't see how you can help being," said Katherine wonderingly. "Orhave you had something to eat since your aunt went away?" she added.
"No," replied Sylvia.
"Then you must be famished," said Katherine decidedly, "and I'm going toget you something."
She moved toward a cupboard on the wall over in a corner of the roomwhere she conjectured the supplies must be kept. The cupboard had leadedglass doors, she noticed, and the framework was of mahogany to match thewoodwork of the room. It had probably been designed as a curio cabinet bythe builder of the house.
"Never mind, I don't want anything to eat," said Sylvia again, in a tonewhich was both commanding and pleading.
"You must," said Katherine firmly, with her hand on the cut glass knob ofthe cupboard door. "You're cold because you're hungry."
She opened the door and investigated the inside. There were some cheapchina dishes and some pots and pans, but no sign of food. She glancedswiftly around the room, but nowhere else were there any supplies. ThenKatherine understood. Her intuition was slow, but finally it came to herwhy Sylvia did not want to admit that she was hungry. There was nothingto eat in the house. There was a pinched, blue look about Sylvia's facethat Katherine had seen before, in the settlement where she had workedwith Miss Fairlee. She recognized the hunger look.
Sylvia met her eye with an attempt at lofty unconcern. "Our royallarder," she remarked, valiantly struggling to maintain her royaldignity, "is exhausted at present. I must speak to my steward about it."
Then her air of lofty composure forsook her all at once, and with alittle wailing cry of "Aunt Aggie!" she put her head down on the arm ofthe chair and wept, pulling the quilt over her face so that Katherinecould not see her cry.
Katherine was beside her in an instant, seeking to comfort her, andstruggling with an unwonted desire to cry herself. The thought of thebrave little spirit, shut up alone here in the dark and cold, hungry andanxious, singing like a lark to keep down her loneliness and anxiety, andwelcoming her chance guest with the gracious air of a princess, movedKatherine as nothing had ever done before.
"Tell me all about it," she said, cuddling the golden head close.
Sylvia struggled manfully to regain her composure, and sat up and dashedthe tears away with an impatient hand. "How dare you cry, and you aprincess?" she said aloud to herself scornfully, with a flash of herbrown eyes, and Katherine caught a glimpse of an indomitable spirit thatno hardship could bow down.
"'Twas but a momentary weakness," she said to Katherine, with a return ofher royal manner. Katherine felt like saluting.
"We've been having a hard time since Uncle Joe died," began Sylvia. "Hewas sick a long time and it took all the money he had saved. Then AuntAggie got sick after he died and isn't strong enough yet to do hard work.She makes shirts. There's a shop here that lets her take work home. Yousee, she can't leave me." Here Sylvia gave an impatient poke at heruseless limbs. "We came here from Millvale, where we used to live, amonth ago. We couldn't find any place to live, so Aunt Aggie gotpermission from the town to come and live in here until we could find aplace. Nobody seems to own this house, that is, nobody knows who owns it,it's been empty so long. Aunt Aggie sold all her furniture to pay herdebts except her sewing machine and the few things we have here. AuntAggie makes shirts, but her eyes gave out this week and she couldn't doanything, so there wasn't any pay. Aunt Aggie got credit for a while atthe store, but yesterday they refused her, so we played that we wouldkeep a fast to-day in honor of our pious grandfather, the king, whoalways used to fast for three days before Christmas. Aunt Aggie only hadenough money to go to the city and get glasses from somebody there thatwould make them for nothing for her, so she could go on sewing. She wenton the earliest train this morning and expected to get back by noon. Ican't think what's keeping her so late."
Katherine looked at her watch. It was half past seven. She wondered ifthe shops were still open so that she could go out and buy groceries. Shebegan to draw on her gloves.
"Don't go away," pleaded Sylvia, catching hold of her hand in alarm."Stay here till she comes. Oh, why doesn't she come? I know something'shappened to her. She's never left me alone so long before. Oh, what willI do if she doesn't come back?"
Fear seized her with icy hands and her face worked pitifully. "AuntAggie! Aunt Aggie!" she cried aloud in terror.
Katherine soothed her as best she could, mentioning all the possiblethings that could have occurred to delay her in the rush of holidaytravel. Sylvia looked reassured after a bit and Katherine was just on thepoint of running out to get some supper for her when there was a sound offeet on the creaking steps outside.
"Here she comes now," said Sylvia with a great sigh of relief.
The footsteps crossed the porch and then stopped. Instead of the sound ofthe front door opening as they expected there came a heavy knock.
"How queer," said Sylvia, "she never knocks. There's no one to let herin."
Katherine hastened out to the hall door. A man stood outside. "Does Mrs.Deane live in this house?" he asked.
"Yes," said Katherine.
"I'm Mr. Grossman, the man she works for," he said. Katherine admittedhim. "The girl, is she here?" he asked. Katherine brought him into theroom. Sylvia looked up inquiringly.
Without greeting or preamble he blurted out, "Your aunty, she's beenhurt. Somebody just telephoned me from such a hospital in the city. Shewas run over by a taxicab and her collarbone broke and her head hurt.She's now by the hospital. She tells them to tell me and I should let youknow."
He stopped talking and whirled his hat around in his hand as though illat ease.
Sylvia sank back in her chair, dead white, her eyes staring at him with acuriously intent gaze, as though trying to comprehend the size of thecalamity which had befallen her.
Tingling with pity, Katherine looked into Sylvia's anguished eyes, and inthe stress of emotion she suddenly remembered Nyoda's name. Sheridan.Sheridan. Mrs. Andrew Sheridan. Carver House. 241 Oak Street. How couldshe ever have forgotten it?
"What's going to become of me?" cried Sylvia in a terrified voice.
Mr. Grossman shifted his weight from one foot to the other and scratc
hedhis head reflectively. Then he shrugged his shoulders helplessly. He wasa Russian Jew, living with his numerous family in a few small rooms overhis shop, and what to do with this lame girl who knew not a soul in townwas too much of a problem for him. To his evident relief Katherine cameto the rescue. "I will take care of her," she said briefly. She openedher handbag and fished for pencil and paper. "Go out and telephone thisperson," she directed, after scribbling for a minute, "and give her themessage written down there."
Mr. Grossman departed, much relieved at being freed from allresponsibility regarding Sylvia, and Katherine sat down beside her littleprincess and endeavored to soothe her distress of mind regarding heraunt. Finally the warmth of the stove made her drowsy and she fell into adoze with her head on Katherine's shoulder.
Half an hour later the long blast of an automobile horn woke the echoesin front of the house. Sylvia half-awakened and murmured sleepily, "Herecome the king's huntsmen."
Katherine slipped out through the front door and flung herself upon afur-coated figure that was coming up the walk, followed by a man.
"_Nyoda!_"
"Katherine! What in the world are you doing here?"
Katherine explained briefly how she came there.
"But I never received your letter!" cried Nyoda in astonishment. "Ithought you were coming to-morrow with the other girls. Poor Katherine,to come all alone and then not find anybody to meet you! I'm so sorry!But it wouldn't be you, Katherine," she finished with a laugh, "ifeverything went smoothly. Now tell me the important thing your messagesaid you wanted to tell me."
Katherine spoke earnestly for a few minutes, at the end of which Nyodanodded emphatically. "Certainly!" she said heartily.
A minute later Katherine gently roused the sleeping princess. "What isit, my dear Duchess?" asked Sylvia drowsily.
"Come, Your Majesty," said Katherine, beginning to wrap the quilt aroundher, "make ready for your journey. We leave at once for the WinterPalace!"