Gill’s first impression of the Baroness Von Traume was of a lady whose smartness was her most noticeable feature. Her figure was excellent—quite unlike the girl’s preconceived idea of a German; she was beautifully gowned, and her hair, rather colourless but abundant, was dressed with a faultlessness which Gillian had never seen on any head in England, and which made her think of the model heads in a hairdresser’s shop windows. But it was her exceeding smartness as a whole that seemed to rise up and hit Gill, as it were.
A lady, whom Gillian fancied might be a visitor because she wore a hat, was sitting on the massive sofa beside the Baroness, and a girl was standing near.
Just in that first moment Gillian felt a little doubt as to the identity of the Baroness—she might have been the lady in the hat, and the smart one a visitor staying in the house; but she never had the smallest doubt over Berta. Berta was exactly what she had pictured her during that long, dreary journey with Miss Seacomb; a podgy girl, with very thick plaits and a face devoid of all expression.
The lady with no hat rose rather stiffly to her feet as Gillian was announced, and advanced exactly two steps to meet her young guest.
Gillian had to do the rest of the advancing, and was extremely conscious that her shoes creaked. But the two steps were etiquette where so humble a guest was concerned, so she surmised very truly, and the Baroness Von Traume understood to a nicety what was due to herself and other people in every conceivable rank of life with which a ‘Von’ could conceive herself consorting.
She greeted Gillian with civility, in German, and Gillian, stumbling woefully and feeling as though every word were bent on eluding her despairing clutch, answered in the same language, explaining her delay and the kindness of the Grand-Duchess.
The message sent from the palace had evidently been received, for Baroness Von Traume’s agate eyes opened a little wider, under their heavy white lids, as she remarked that the Grand-Duchess was “a true child of nature,—impulsive, but charming.” Somehow Gillian did not care for the way in which this was said, and yet even Mademoiselle Pipignon could hardly have objected to the Baroness’s description of her royal pupil. Gill was glad when the Baroness turned to the podgy girl.
“My daughter Berta,—Miss Courtney. I trust you will be good companions.”
Gillian took the slightly damp hand which Berta offered, and said, “How do you do?” She believed that she ought to have said something pleasant about the companionship to which the Baroness alluded; but nothing seemed to come. She was comparing Berta with the Grand-Duchess Carina, and wondering how, even for a moment, she could have mistaken the one for the other.
Berta did not seem to have much to say in her mother’s presence. Her round, light blue eyes stared unblinkingly at the English girl; her squat figure, attired in a bright blue skirt and a plaid silk blouse, built firmly, was absolutely motionless on one particular bit of pattern in the carpet. But when the Baroness had suggested that she should take her guest upstairs to her room, she turned out to have a good deal more to say than at first appeared.
“You have not such large boots as I expected,” she remarked, as the two girls climbed the stairs together.
Gill was so startled by this conversational opening that she stopped dead, and gazed first at Berta and then down at her feet.
“Same size as most people’s, aren’t they?” she answered, after a pause, in which she had waited in vain for Berta to explain herself.
“You are also exceedingly thin, but your teeth are not prominent, that I can see.”
“Look here, if you want to discuss my appearance, do you mind hurrying up and getting it over?” Gill asked, a little sarcastically. “Perhaps you would like to know my size in gloves?”
The German came out quite glibly that time, for Gillian was feeling decidedly annoyed. She had not bargained for this sort of thing. Then, as Berta’s pale eyes stared at her uncomprehendingly, it struck her that it was absurd to lose her temper over anyone so stupid.
“Do let’s talk about something more interesting,” she urged, half laughing. “There are ever so many things I want you to tell me about the life here, or else I shall be making all kinds of idiotic mistakes.”
“Ach! so! In England they learn not then how to hold the knife and fork?” Berta enquired, with even greater interest than she had displayed over the size of Gillian’s feet.
Gillian did not know whether to laugh or be annoyed. It was not exactly a promising beginning to the seven weeks’ companionship. She really could not think of anything else to say, and went up the rest of the staircase in silence.
The room allotted to her was a pleasant one enough, with a floor stained dark brown, and polished till it shone and was almost fit for skating. There was a large wooden bedstead, with a very thick crimson quilt upon it, as though it were mid-winter still, and all the windows were shut and bolted; Gillian thought that she would have them open as soon as possible, and that the quilt would probably spend the night upon the polished floor. The room smelt rather close and had hot water pipes running round it; there was a deep cupboard in the wall, two or three chairs, and a dressing table, covered with a beautiful embroidered cloth; but the washing accommodation was not up to the rest of the furniture, the jug and basin being small and of cheap, brightly-coloured crockery.
However, that was a minor evil; Gill felt sure that there would be at least one bathroom in a house like this. After that first glance all round her room, she walked to the window.
“What a nice room, Berta! But I think I’ll open the windows, if you don’t mind. It is such a lovely evening, it’s a shame to keep them shut.”
The sash was very stiff; she had only got it raised a little way, when Berta’s rather podgy hand came over her shoulder and pulled the window down again with a slam.
“You must not open the windows,” she said emphatically. “The room is clean.”
Gillian faced round. “But—I say, if you don’t mind, I always have the window open; of course I’ll be careful to shut it if it should rain or anything, but I couldn’t sleep with it shut.”
“Dust will come in,” Berta said, unmoved.
“But it is so hot,” urged poor Gill; “it’s all right, Berta, I’ll dust the room, I really will, if that’s all.” She pushed up the sash again with determination.
“It is small wonder that in England the people inhabit pigsties,” Berta observed, with irritating complacency.
Gillian swallowed her annoyance as best she could; at least she had conquered about the window. She took off her hat, and tossed it upon the bed; she wanted to ask Berta whether she had ever been in England and what had given her these extraordinary ideas. What she did ask was about the time of dinner, and whether she and Berta came down for it. Before answering, Berta removed the hat and placed it in the cupboard, still with that air of complacent superiority which was so trying.
“Here in our country the bed is to sleep in; the wardrobe is for articles of clothing,” she informed her guest. (“Sorry,” murmured Gill.) “You ask of dinner,” Berta went on. “We dine, yes. Do you not eat in England?”
Gillian tried to explain the schoolroom tea, and the modest supper following it for people not promoted to dining late. It was not very easy to explain things to Berta, for she looked all the while as though she felt it a waste of time to listen to what anybody had to say. Still it was as good a subject for conversation as any other, and something clearly must be talked about.
The bringing up of Gillian’s luggage proved a welcome diversion; Berta condescended to take a little more interest in the question of the English girl’s clothes, and sat primly on a chair while Gill unpacked and put the things away with more care and neatness than she would probably have shown if it had not been for the snub about the hat.
It was perhaps hardly to be expected that Berta should be enthusiastic about the English girl’s very uninteresting clothes. Aunt Edith had no taste; Gillian had always realised that vaguely, though it had never seeme
d worth while to make a fuss when Elys wore the same and did not mind.
It was one of Aunt Edith’s pet plans to dress the girls in pairs, and Gillian paired with Elys. It never seemed to have struck Aunt Edith that colours which suited Elys’ pink plumpness might be most unbecoming to Gillian, with her pale colouring and hazel eyes.
This summer the best frock of Elys and herself was of a most unbecoming shade of blue—something between saxe and electric—calculated to take away every shade of colour that a person without much of that commodity might happen to possess. Gillian loathed it, and was always in disgrace for failing to change from her week-day brown linen when she went out to tea. Sundays were of course beyond her resisting powers, and she had to bear with the detested blue.
Her brown linen dress had been left behind as too much to pack; Aunt Edith had suggested that she could “make out” (a favourite phrase of Aunt Edith’s) very well indeed with the blue serge skirt and blouses for every day, and, “After all, it doesn’t matter much what you wear abroad.”
The only part of her outfit which Gill viewed with the smallest complacency was her evening dress, which had been new last winter, and was still very tolerably fresh-looking. Fortunately she and Elys agreed in liking white, and the dresses were of white eolienne, very soft and dainty.
Gill glanced at Berta as she took this dress from its folds of tissue paper and shook it out, preparatory to hanging it in the deep cupboard.
“This is my evening frock,” she said, by way of breaking the silence with which Berta had surveyed her unpacking, after the first interested enquiry whether Gill was now about to put away her garments.
Berta gazed at it thoughtfully. “For me, I have at the present four evening dresses,” she remarked at length. “One is pink—of the colour of a moss-rose bud—another blue as the sky, a third white satin with rose ribbons, and the fourth figured with a pattern of flowers. All were purchased in Berlin or Paris, and were of an expense considerable.”
Gillian gazed at her in blank silence, and before she had recovered sufficiently to speak, a bell rang which Berta announced as the signal for dressing. She got up and walked away to put on one of the four evening dresses, Gill supposed, leaving the English girl to hurry into hers, to the accompaniment of a good deal of inward wonder how she would ever manage to “stand” Berta Von Traume for seven long weeks.
CHAPTER VII
The Result of Hanging a Coat
There was another gentleman at dinner besides the Baron Von Traume, Gill’s host, whom she had met upon the stairs, when she ventured down by herself at last, after waiting in vain for Berta to come and fetch her.
This visitor was not introduced—Gill very soon discovered that an English schoolgirl in Germany is of considerably less importance than she is in England,—but Berta and her mother addressed him deferentially as Baron Von Eckart. She recognised the name, of course; he was the gentleman who was visiting the Grand-Duchess upon the Kaiser’s business, and whom she had been unwilling to receive. That in itself prepossessed Gillian against him, and it cannot be said that he did much to make away with the prejudice that she had already formed.
Her host, after a prolonged appraising stare at her, did condescend to bid her welcome and to hope that she had experienced a comfortable journey; he also called her attention two or three times during dinner to some course that she was passing by, and advised her to change her mind, as she would never get anything better: but Baron Von Eckart took absolutely no notice of her from first to last.
He was a good-looking man on the young side of middle age, with a somewhat military appearance, due possibly to the highly waxed moustache which he wore with the ends turned up, à la Kaiser. He talked a good deal about his doings in Berlin; where he seemed to go everywhere and do everything, and to move and have his being entirely among titled folk. Gillian thought him the most conceited person she had ever met, and was intensely bored before the long hot dinner was half-way through its interminable length.
There was nothing in the dining-room for her to look at; she had no resource but listening to what she could make out of the conversation of the Baron Von Eckart and his host, with some interpolations by the Baroness. The dining-room contained no furniture except a narrow table, the necessary chairs, and a sideboard, on which stood some massive silver goblets and a highly polished brass coffee-machine. The table linen was beautifully fine, and embroidered with an immense monogram in each corner, but she missed the flowers that would have been upon an English dinner table. There was not one vase to be seen; but bottles of wine stood in the centre of the table, and each of the diners was accommodated with three or four wine glasses, though there was not by any means an equal plenty in the way of knives and forks. Gill could see only a preparation for two courses after the soup, but she discovered early in the proceedings that you were expected to retain your knife and fork from course to course.
The maids who waited at table wore cotton dresses with short sleeves, and handed round little trays with various very odd accompaniments to the courses. Gill accepted these as they came, though it seemed strange to eat marmalade with boiled chicken, and curry-powder dry with fillet of beef. If the dinner had been less woefully dull she would have thought these experiments rather fun; but she was not only very tired of the Baron’s “high society,” she was very physically tired as well after her long journey, and was in constant terror that she would disgrace herself and her nationality by yawning.
If Berta would have talked to her a little it would have made things easier; but Berta, attired in the pink evening frock, was going stolidly through her dinner, and her only contribution to the conversation was to disapprove the sauce served with the venison, when her mother remarked languidly that Berta would make a good wife one day; she had “already such an understanding of the things of the kitchen.”
Gillian only kept herself awake by a strong determination to fix her mind upon what the visitor was saying and to make herself take it in; she worked so hard at the task that she thought she never would forget the names of certain of the Baron’s intimates, nor the tones in his voice as he spoke about them.
Dinner came to an end at last, with very delicious coffee, and the ladies retired, after the Baron had informed his wife that he and his guest would not join her immediately—an arrangement Gill had taken as a matter of course, but which it seemed was not so here. Gillian had been longing for this moment, and had mentally prepared and rehearsed to herself the speech in which she enquired of her hostess whether she wished to arrange to-night the hours and arrangements for Berta’s literature, and if not, might she, Gill, go to bed?
But when Gillian had followed her hostess into the same room where she had been received, it was to find that the Baroness had no idea of noticing whether the English girl were tired. Gill had to sit upright, on a very fine damask-covered chair, trying to look awake and interested, while the Baroness pointed out her duties and, incidentally, the immense superiority of the German education.
She and Berta were to be together all day, it appeared; Berta could talk English with fluency, her mother said, only she was not fond of doing it. The hours of study would be between the early coffee and mittagessen; afterwards Gillian would share in Berta’s pursuits, but the Baroness desired that the conversation should be always in English.
Gillian said “Yes” and “No” and “Of course,” and “Yes, I’ll try,” at proper intervals, and hoped she did not look as dazed and stupid as she felt. She had a horrid feeling that underneath that languid fine-lady manner the Baroness was scrutinising her sharply, and that the comments on the superiority of German education over English were not entirely without point. She certainly was not showing off the English schoolgirl to advantage, she thought ruefully; she was really beginning to feel quite sick with weariness, and the sound of the trains was continually in her ears, making it difficult to hear her hostess’ voice.
It was quite difficult to force her muddled senses to keep pace with any c
hange in the conversation, and it came as quite a shock when she discovered that the Baroness had ceased to talk of Shakespeare, and was speaking of the young Grand-Duchess.
“I suppose you have already related to Berta how it was that the mistake occurred which took you to the Grand-Ducal Palace and the Grand Duchess Carina?”
Gillian could not very well explain to Berta’s mother how extraordinarily difficult she found it to converse with Berta on any subject whatsoever.
“No, I don’t think I said anything; I mean, there wasn’t much to say,” she answered lamely.
“No?” the Baroness said, with more vivacity in her manner than Gillian had yet seen. “English girls are incomprehensible. At your age I should have had reams to tell of the Grand-Duchess’s apartments—how furnished—who was with her—what she wore—what she said …”
There was a slight accent of reproach in the Baroness’s voice. Gillian thought perhaps that it was justified; at home Elys and Frances and Flossie, not to mention Aunt Edith, would certainly have wanted to hear everything about her adventure from first to last.
“But I expect you know all about the palace,” she said; “you’ve been to parties there, haven’t you, Berta? and I daresay Baron von Eckart …”
“The Grand-Duchess informed you that Berta has been among her guests? My child, you should feel flattered,” the Baroness cried, addressing the last remark to Berta, who was sitting silent and unresponsive in her smart rose-pink silk frock.
It was certainly easier to struggle against that overpowering sleepiness when she could talk upon an interesting subject instead of listening to the Baroness’s views on education. Gill woke up a little more.
“No, it was someone in the train told me that—an Englishman, who came to my help when I was in a fearful fix—I mean when I couldn’t make the ticket-collector …”
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