Wanted, an English Girl

by Moore, Dorothea

  If she could only see Mademoiselle de Monti, now, while Berta was still eating fruit-cakes; or even Mademoiselle Pipignon, though she would be a great deal more difficult to talk to. Still, Mademoiselle Pipignon would certainly be better than no one, and Gillian scanned the faces of the passers-by more anxiously than ever in the hope that fortune might stand her friend and send one or other of the Grand-Duchess’s ladies in this direction. And then she caught sight of a familiar face, though it was neither of the faces for which she had been looking so anxiously. It was the pleasant good-looking visage of Rupert-George.

  Her start forward must have attracted his attention—he looked at her for a moment without recognition, and then turned and came to her, raising his hat, with a smile.

  “My pal of the train! What luck seeing you! I wanted to know how the literary bear-leading was getting on.”

  Gillian took her resolution all in a hurry. Rupert-George was there, and Mademoiselle de Monti and Mademoiselle Pipignon were not, and the Grand-Duchess had herself agreed that Rupert-George was a man one could trust. Gillian was going to trust him now.

  “I am most awfully glad to see you,” she told him; “for I’m in a fearful hole, and I know you are a friend of the Grand-Duchess.”

  The rather amused expression left Rupert-George’s face all in an instant. “Yes, I am that,” he said quickly. “What is it—about her?”

  “You know I went there last night—”

  “What? To the Grand-ducal palace?”

  “Yes, I did. Of course you can’t know. How stupid of me! There was a muddle, and I got taken for a girl from England whom the Grand-Duchess was expecting, but she was most fearfully good to me, and that’s how I knew about … I mean”—Gillian pulled herself up—“I mean that’s why I cared specially. And when I got to the Baroness they did seem to want to know rather a lot …”

  Rupert-George stopped her, and looked about him rather carefully.

  “One moment. Where is Fräulein Berta?”

  “Eating cakes and ices inside.”

  “Thank the Lord! That’s a long job,” Rupert-George exclaimed. He drew Gillian a little away from the door of the confectioner’s.

  “Just walk up and down with me,” he suggested. “Then it is only an acquaintance you have met, and we’re comparing notes about our experiences in foreign parts. Standing in the doorway like that was sure to lead to some one bumping into us in about a minute, and wanting to know what on earth we were talking about. Now, what’s this about the Baroness?”

  “It seems hateful when I’m staying with them,” Gillian blurted out, “but the Grand-Duchess said one could trust you—”

  “Did she?” interrupted Rupert-George. “What did … oh, never mind—afterwards.”

  “I was telling her about your being so decent to me in the train,” Gillian said. “I hope that makes you the right person to tell this to.”

  “I’m sure I’m the right person to tell it to if it is anything concerning the Grand-Duchess,” Rupert-George, or Captain Cartaret, as the Baroness would have called him, assured her with refreshing certainty, and the two walked away from the dangerous neighbourhood of Wingeld’s.

  That movement gave Gillian a queer sensation of living in a story-book instead of in an ordinary schoolgirl existence which up till now had been rather particularly prosaic. But for all the story-book sensation, it was a wonderful relief to have found some one to whom she could unburden herself. She did not waste a minute in telling her friend what she had overheard as she tried to hang up her coat in the cupboard last night. Rupert-George listened without interruption, except once, when he gave a little stifled exclamation.

  “Was that all you heard?” he asked when she stopped.

  “Yes. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, you know.”

  “Of course. I understand. But it was on the whole rather lucky that you did it in this case,” Rupert-George said thoughtfully.

  Gillian noticed that his handsome alert face had quite lost its attractive smile. He was very grave now, and that made him look older than the young man who had come to her help in the train.

  “One could have done with a little more information—still, what you have is something fairly definite to go upon. You are sure about the speaker being the Baron von Eckart?”

  “Oh, yes, I couldn’t mistake his voice. He talked so much at dinner, you see.”

  Rupert-George smiled a little. “It strikes me that you know how to use your wits, Miss Gillian. I shall be proud to work with you in this matter, if you’ll let me. …”

  Gillian gave a little gasp—the sentence had rather an alarming sound. “As we are both friends of Car … of the Grand-Duchess,” Rupert-George finished, and she felt better.

  “Who is Baron von Eckart?”

  “‘Sh! Don’t raise your voice when you use names, and, above all, don’t look as if I were telling you anything unusual, for you never know who is noticing us. The eminent conversationist to whom you refer is—probably—one of the Kaiser’s cleverest spies.”

  Gill said: “Oh!” There seemed nothing else to say, just at first. Then she thought of something else. “And why does he … I mean, why doesn’t he like you?”

  “We’ve knocked up against each other already a time or so, and he has, I believe, a suspicion that I might try to get in his way,” Rupert-George explained.

  “And you are Captain Cartaret?”

  “My name is Rupert (Ugh!) Alexander Edward Cartaret, and I hold a captain’s commission in the 19th Hussars,” said Rupert-George. “Now let’s turn back, or Miss Berta may think your absence suspicious; but I want you to attend very carefully to something I’m going to tell you. It’s important. … The Grand-Duchess’s big neighbour is supposed to have an eye on Insterburg, and—well, he isn’t troubled by many scruples. If Car—the Grand-Duchess should be in any trouble by and by—here is my stepfather’s address, written on a leaf of my pocket-book—that will always find me—and I want you to promise me faithfully that if anything is wrong with her you’ll write to me at once—because we’re both her friends. Will you?”

  “I promise,” Gill said earnestly.

  “About the other business, we can do nothing just now,” went on Cartaret. “I shall see that Mademoiselle de Monti knows what the Von Traumes and Von Eckart are about—that’s all. Don’t worry, but keep my address. Got it in your pocket—that’s right. Now don’t you think that Miss Berta will be seriously ill if we allow her to eat any more fruit-cakes?”

  CHAPTER IX

  Prince Waldemar

  Gillian was so much interested in what Captain Cartaret was saying that she had not noticed an increasing pressure on the pavement outside Wingeld’s, until, as she was turning to look for Berta, there was a sudden hearty burst of cheering, and Rupert-George pulled off his straw hat and stood with it in his hand and an extra dash of colour on his handsome sun-bronzed face.

  Gillian looked round again. She and Rupert-George were in the front row of a crowd, which seemed to have miraculously collected all in an instant from nowhere.

  Every man in that crowd had his hat off; every woman had a handkerchief or silk scarf in her hand. Gill saw the reason in a moment.

  A carriage was driving slowly down the wide sunny street, and in that carriage, her beautiful little face looking most bewitching under a simple broad-brimmed hat trimmed with rose-buds, sat the Grand-Duchess Carina.

  Opposite were Mademoiselle de Monti and the portly upright figure of “Pipchen,” but Gillian had no eyes for them: hers were all for the slender girl bowing and smiling in answer to the thunderous shouts of “God bless your Highness!” “Long live our Grand-Duchess!”

  Would Carina see her in the crowd? Gillian could not help hoping that she would, though she had too great a horror of drawing attention to herself to join in the cheering, or to wave her handkerchief, as the girls around her were doing.

  Gillian had pretty well escaped the usual violent adoration for mistresses at the “High.” El
ys had suffered from the disease so acutely that perhaps she had acted as a Helot, and now Gill found it quite difficult to understand her own overwhelming desire that Carina should bestow one, just one, of those charming smiles upon her.

  She stood like a stock or a stone, longing with an intense fervency for that smile, but certainly doing nothing to win it.

  The carriage was abreast of her now; in another moment it would have gone by. And then Carina saw her.

  That peculiarly sunny smile of hers flashed out; she leaned forward and said something in an undertone to Mademoiselle Pipignon, who seemed to disapprove, and then the carriage stopped and Mademoiselle de Monti leaned to one side, saying:

  “Gillian, come! Her Highness wishes it.”

  Gillian made two steps to the side of the carriage, feeling as though she were walking straight into the seventh heaven, and, it is to be feared, forgetting Berta as completely as though she had never existed. Carina wanted her; the Grand-Duchess had not forgotten.

  Carina probably had not seen who was Gillian’s companion until the girl moved. Then Gill saw her glance at Captain Cartaret for a moment and then at Mademoiselle Pipignon, as though not quite certain what to do. Then, with a little shrug of her graceful shoulders, she appeared to make up her mind.

  “I am so pleased to see you, Gillian,” she said. “And so you and Captain Cartaret have met again already.”

  She smiled at Rupert-George, a smile that held a certain invitation about it, and Cartaret bowed, answering the smile.

  Gillian had an idea that the Grand-Duchess purposed summoning him too, but before she had time to speak again Rupert-George was shouldered aside by some one who came out of Wingeld’s in a great hurry, and a rather high-pitched voice exclaimed, in French:

  “The Grand-Duchess herself, by all that’s lucky!”

  The young officer whom Berta had pointed out to Gillian as Prince Waldemar clanked forward to the side of the Grand-Duchess’s carriage, and raised the hand which she held out (a trifle unwillingly, Gill fancied) to his lips.

  “I did not know you were in Chardille, my cousin,” Carina said.

  “I only came late last night,” he told her; “too late to venture upon offering my respects until this morning.”

  “We shall of course be delighted to see you at luncheon, my cousin,” the Grand-Duchess told him, with a curious little touch of dignity, which made her seem older than the Carina who had poured out tea for Gillian in her special sanctum yesterday.

  Carina still held Gillian’s hand in hers all the time that she was talking to Prince Waldemar, so that Gillian had the opportunity of looking closely at the Prussian Prince without being rude.

  It was not an attractive face; somehow Gillian was frankly disappointed in her first near view of a real live prince. She had hoped for something better, even from a German one.

  He was not exactly ill-looking, but the eyes were rather prominent and pale in colour, the lips were thick, and the chin inclined to the runaway; while the supercilious expression would have spoiled a far handsomer man. It was a real refreshment to turn from him to Rupert-George, who had come forward at a sign from the Grand-Duchess.

  “Cousin, allow me to present to you Miss Gillian Courtney and Captain Cartaret, two of my English friends,” Carina said, to Gillian’s horror. The Prince accepted her introduction graciously enough, however; brought his heels together with a click and bowed profoundly, then held out his hand to the English schoolgirl “in the English fashion which my father loves as he loves all things English,” he told Carina.

  He was not nearly so polite to Rupert-George, only acknowledging his presentation with a very slight inclination of his head. Perhaps Carina thought that the Prince might have been more courteous, for she spoke to Captain Cartaret in an extra friendly fashion that brought a slightly anxious expression to Mademoiselle Pipignon’s face.

  “It is quite a time since you have been in Chardille, Captain Cartaret. Are you making a long stay now?”

  “My leave expires in two days’ time, your Highness. It is a case of getting back to duty to-morrow, worse luck!” Rupert-George answered frankly and easily; too frankly perhaps Prince Waldemar thought, or perhaps it was that he did not like the friendly interest which Carina had shown in the English officer.

  “Recalling soldiers. In England are they still trembling and shaking then, in expectation of a German invasion?” he asked, with a laugh.

  Gill saw Captain Cartaret look full into the prominent eyes.

  “If I had known it would interest your Imperial Highness I would have made special enquiries on the subject before coming here,” he said innocently, just a shade too innocently. “As it was, I am afraid I never heard the Germans even mentioned.”

  Carina tried to stop it—Gillian saw how she was trying—and she did not laugh outright as a girl who was not a Grand-Duchess would have done. But her lips twitched a little and her voice trembled suspiciously as she turned very quickly to Gill.

  “I shall hope to see you again very shortly, Gillian, and in the meantime Mademoiselle de Monti has an invitation for you.”

  Gillian recognised that for a dismissal, and made as good a curtsy as she could manage in a shabby serge skirt that did not lend itself to courtly ways; then stepped back.

  Carina, quite grave now, spoke to Prince Waldemar.

  “Perhaps you will give me the pleasure of your company now, cousin?”

  Prince Waldemar had seen her struggling with laughter at Captain Cartaret’s retort. He could not very well show annoyance to the Grand-Duchess, but Gill saw the glance he cast upon Rupert-George, and felt quite nervous for a moment. Then she remembered that however angry Prince Waldemar might be, a Prussian could do nothing to an Englishman, and this was the free and independent state of Insterburg.

  “You are too kind, little cousin,” he said, opening the carriage door. “I shall be delighted to come with you—if you have quite finished with your English friends.”

  “Good-bye, Captain Cartaret, or rather au revoir,” the Grand-Duchess said. “Gillian, remember you are coming to visit me again and tell me what you think of Chardille. Oh, and Gabrielle, have you told her that you have tickets for the opera to-night?”

  “I sent them to the Baroness von Traume, ma’am, with a note inviting both Gillian and the Baroness’s daughter,” Mademoiselle de Monti said, and at that Carina smiled a good-bye to Gillian and Cartaret, and gravely made room for Prince Waldemar by her side.

  CHAPTER X

  How the Evening Began

  Gillian became aware of Berta as the Grand-Duchess drove away amid a storm of cheering, a Berta whose round pale blue eyes appeared almost ready to start from her head.

  “The Grand-Duchess spoke to you and presented you to His Imperial Highness, and you have not even your best dress on,” she gasped.

  Gillian laughed. “I don’t suppose Grand-Duchesses notice frocks of ordinary girls like we are,” she said cheerfully, and was instantly shown that she had said the wrong thing by Berta’s crushing answer, “I am not an ordinary girl—I am a Von.”

  The crowd was beginning to disperse; Captain Cartaret, with rather an amused twinkle in his eyes, raised his hat to Gill and Berta and hurried off in the direction of the old town.

  “It is the time of mittagessen; we will return home,” Berta said, so chillingly that Gill knew that either her “ordinary girls” was not forgiven, or it had been a deadly insult that the Grand-Duchess had talked to the English girl and not the German one.

  Well, if Berta wanted to be huffy about it, she just might be. Carina had remembered Gill and spoken to her; Rupert-George had relieved her of the weight of her uncomfortable secret, and there was the delight of this evening’s invitation to which to look forward. Gillian could not feel as though Berta and her ill-temper mattered much.

  The two girls walked home in silence, which lasted until a servant handed Gillian a letter as she came into the hall. Then Berta spoke.

  “Is the lette
r then for you?”

  “Of course it is; did you think I should open other people’s?” Gillian enquired briskly, reading her note with great delight. It was written in English, and in it Mademoiselle de Monti said she had been presented with three unexpected tickets for the opera this evening, and it would give her great pleasure if the Baroness von Traume would allow Gillian and Berta to be her companions. Would Gillian telephone to the Palace (she gave the number to be used) and Mademoiselle de Monti would call for them in a car at seven o’clock and bring them back after the opera and a little supper, to which Dick Cheshire would escort the three. Mademoiselle de Monti had also written to the Baroness upon the subject, it appeared, for when Gillian raised her eyes from her note to acquaint Berta joyfully with its contents it was to find her hostess standing near, another note in the same writing in her hand.

  “Isn’t it too heavenly of Mademoiselle de Monti? We can go, can’t we?” she asked, handing her note to the Baroness.

  Berta looked over the note with her mother, but her face did not light up as Gill expected. “For me, I do not want to go,” she said stolidly, not to say sulkily.

  “Berta!” Gill cried, at once amazed and horrified, but Berta went on, without seeming to notice her dismay.

  “They had not the good manners to observe my existence this morning, this Mademoiselle de Monti and the Grand-Duchess; yet they had enough to say to Miss Courtney in her old clothes, and to Captain Cartaret.”

  “You were inside that confectioner’s eating ices all the time,” Gillian interrupted, vehement in the defence of the Grand-Duchess and of Mademoiselle de Monti. “Captain Cartaret and I happened to be outside, and they saw us, that was all.”

  Gillian had not in the least intended to get Berta into trouble with her mother; she only meant to show the Baroness that Carina and the maid of honour had not been neglecting Berta, as Berta had implied. But the Baroness turned upon her daughter very sharply.