Wanted, an English Girl

by Moore, Dorothea

  “How often before have I not had occasion to reprove your greediness, Berta? Why were you not outside with the girl whom I have brought here on purpose to be your companion?”

  Gillian could not help feeling exceedingly thankful that Berta had not been with her, but of course she could not have said so, in any case, and was just now a good deal distressed at having brought this severe rebuke on Berta by her careless words.

  “I say, Baroness, please, it was my fault really,” she asseverated. “I didn’t want anything to eat, and went and stood in the doorway, you see. Of course, if I had known about the Grand-Duchess coming I should have called Berta—and, anyhow, we are both asked to-night.”

  “I go not,” Berta announced sullenly, and her mother’s tart “You will” did not appear to have the smallest effect in shaking her stubborn resolution.

  Gillian went upstairs to wash her hands and smooth her hair for mittagessen, leaving the Baroness still explaining her wishes to a daughter who had apparently become both deaf and dumb.

  In the end Berta got her own way and did not go. She was sullen and silent through the meal, though neither ill-temper nor the cakes and ices consumed so short a time ago in Wingeld’s seemed to spoil her appetite; but at kaffee—after kaffee to be more accurate—she announced herself sick, and shortly afterwards retired to her bed; upon which she lay, with the quilt carefully covered by a dust-sheet lest her frock should soil its splendours, giving to all enquirers short but trenchant descriptions as to what would happen if she were moved.

  Gillian, after vainly suggesting the remedies known to the schoolroom at home, went dolefully downstairs to ask the Baroness whether she must telephone to the Palace to say that neither could come.

  “That would be most mannerless when such trouble has been taken to invite you,” the Baroness said frigidly. “I shall myself telephone to Mademoiselle de Monti, explaining my daughter’s indisposition, but still accepting her invitation for yourself. You will have supper at Estinotti’s, the note said, did it not?”

  “I don’t know; did it?” Gillian asked doubtfully. “It’s sure to be Estinotti’s, though,” she added, “for Mademoiselle de Monti told me about after-theatre suppers there, and was so kind as to say that she would take me some evening. It is a shame about Berta.”

  Gill’s private opinion was that Berta was not nearly so sick as she thought herself, but no girl could behave as queerly as Berta was doing without feeling at least rather seedy, and Gillian felt sorry for her accordingly. All the same, it was a great relief that the Baroness did not expect her to stay at home upon Berta’s account.

  She would have liked to telephone herself, so that she could thank Mademoiselle de Monti—she had hardly managed to say anything in the street. But the Baroness never seemed to dream of such a thing, and Gillian did not like to suggest it when her hostess had been so kind in allowing her to go. She went upstairs to put on her evening frock in the best of spirits, and could not keep from singing to herself as she moved about her room, until Berta sent down a message by one of the short-sleeved maids that the sound made her head worse, and Gill had to relapse into silence.

  The opera began too early for dinner, at least for more than the first two courses, and it did not seem to occur to the Baroness to invite her guest to partake of these and then to leave the table. To leave the table before the meal was finished was apparently an unheard-of thing among Germans, and the Baron and Baroness swept into the dining-room when the meal was announced, leaving Gill to wait in the drawing-room for the ten minutes or so that still had to elapse before Mademoiselle de Monti would come for her. Baron von Eckart had left for Berlin that afternoon, it appeared.

  Not that Gillian minded being left. The afternoon kaffee had been served not so very long ago, and she was too much excited to feel hungry yet, and was really thankful to be spared the interminable dinner of yesterday.

  Only it was difficult to settle to anything during that time of waiting; it was not worth while to dip into the novel that the Baroness had left upon a little table by the sofa, and her work was upstairs. Gillian did half think of going to see Berta, but Berta was not in the sweetest of tempers, to judge by her message. She decided against Berta, and fidgeted about the room, looking at the ornaments upon the mantelpiece and the pictures on the walls, until a good five minutes had gone by and it might be considered reasonable time to put on her gloves.

  She pulled them on carefully, for they were cleaned ones, and she had a horrid fear that they might crack at the seams. They looked better than she expected, as she glanced at herself in the large mirror over the mantelpiece. Her frock was certainly quite nice; but her shoes were not up to the mark, nor was her handkerchief, which she noticed sticking rather aggressively out of her waist-band, now she came to look critically at herself. She had snatched up a clean one without looking to see what it was like, whether small or large, best or everyday.

  That at least might be remedied; she had five minutes, or nearly; and there were two dainty little handkerchiefs at the bottom of her sachet, which Marcia had given her at Christmas and she had put by for some great occasion. This was the great occasion, certainly. Gillian opened the drawing-room door very gently, for she did not want the Baroness to hear her and possibly come out to enquire why she did not stay quietly in the drawing-room, as she had been desired to do, till Mademoiselle de Monti came. It would be so unpleasant to have to explain the handkerchief under the cold glance of those agate eyes.

  Gill hurried upstairs and into her bedroom, passing on the landing the maid who waited upon Berta and herself in the schoolroom, a bright-eyed, fresh-looking girl of seventeen, an Insterburger.

  Marie quite jumped at the sight of Gillian.

  “I thought that Mademoiselle had gone out, and told Madame la Baronne so even now,” she said in French, the slightly hesitating French of the Insterburger, who takes his or her language from the nearest frontier and is never quite sure that it is right.

  Gillian stopped. It was decidedly pleasant to have some one in the house, even a little schoolroom maid, who took an interest in her movements. She had made friends with Marie that morning over the early coffee, and had already found out that she was Number Two in a poor family living in the old town, and that she had gone into the service of “Madame la Baronne” because her elder sister, Tienette, was too delicate.

  Tienette stayed at home and made lace, it appeared; she was “of a beauty extraordinary,” Marie proudly assured Gillian; there was “no prettier girl in all Chardille, excepting only the Grand-Duchess,” and when Tienette was working at her pillow in the open doorway for the air, her father was forced to stand there beside her, to keep the gentlemen from talking to her and hindering her work.

  “Can’t she talk to the gentlemen and work at the same time?” Gill had asked, with an idea that the sentry father might be rather a nuisance.

  “Not when the gentlemen are officers from Germany, Mademoiselle, and there are many of them here in Chardille.”

  “If they are such a nuisance I should just tell them not to hang round, if I were your father and Tienette,” Gillian had said, half laughing, but Marie’s reply was given with absolute conviction and a very wise shake of the head.

  “Ah! Mademoiselle is English, and she does not know the German officer. He thinks that he is heaven-sent, and that any girl should give humble thanks to Heaven that one so great should condescend to be rude to her.”

  “How perfectly disgusting!” Gill had cried indignantly, and then the coffee was finished, and Marie had to whisk away the tray and get on with her work.

  That little conversation had given Gillian a very friendly feeling towards the Insterburger girl, only a year older than herself but so wise already, and she stopped to answer Marie in spite of her haste.

  “No, I haven’t gone yet. A car did stop at the door five minutes ago, but I think it was some one who had mistaken the number. I heard them say something about it. It isn’t quite time for Mademoiselle
de Monti to come for me yet, and I want a nice handkerchief first.”

  There was a tall clock on the landing. Gillian looked at it as she spoke, and saw that Marie had very good reason for thinking that the taxi was Mademoiselle de Monti’s car. Either Gill’s own watch was slow or the Baroness’s clock was fast. There was a disparity of nearly ten minutes between the two.

  “I must hurry if you’re right,” she said, and ran into her room, colliding violently in the doorway with some one who was just coming out—the Baroness von Traume.

  Horrified by her own awkwardness, Gill blundered into apologies and explanations. She was far too much perturbed to wonder much just then what the Baroness could be doing in her, Gill’s, room in the middle of dinner, and to add to everything she heard Mademoiselle de Monti’s car at the door before she had half found the German to express her sense of her own stupidity.

  There was nothing for it but to go as quickly as possible, though the agate eyes of her hostess had not yet softened in the least towards such explanation as she had been able to get out.

  She did not worry any more about the handkerchief; that did not seem to matter now, but muttered something about not keeping Mademoiselle de Monti waiting, and hurried out of her room, feeling hot all over. As she crossed the landing the Baron opened his bedroom door and asked impatiently:

  “Have you finished?”

  Then he saw Gillian, and swore, not by any means under his breath.

  Gillian felt rather paralysed.

  “Mademoiselle de Monti is late in coming,” the Baroness informed her husband, “but the windows of our visitor are now closed securely. You had left them open,” she added, calmly, turning to Gillian, “and the police will fine if they observe. I lost no time in making all safe.”

  Gill’s confusion was past anything except a mumbled “I’m so sorry” and “Thank you so much” at the moment, but she was not down the stairs before it occurred to her as a very odd thing that if the police regulations of Chardille were really so stringent, the Baroness did not send a servant to close the windows? The Baron and Baroness had not struck her last night as the sort of people to leave their dinner to grow cold for any small reason. Probably even that much would not have struck Gillian if it had not been for the sentence she had overheard last night, and Rupert-George’s description of the guest, Baron von Eckart, as “one of the Kaiser’s cleverest spies.” And once she was established in the beautiful car beside Mademoiselle de Monti, she forgot everything except enjoyment of the glorious present.

  CHAPTER XI

  How it Went On

  The opera-house of Chardille is one of the finest in the world, for the Insterburgers possess the German appreciation of good music, without, thank Heaven! any other marked characteristics of that cultured race.

  The pillars are of glimmering white marble; the hangings of a wonderful dull sage-green velvet, with silver fringes. From their seats in the front row of the dress-circle Mademoiselle de Monti pointed out to Gillian the Grand-ducal box, with Carina’s royal lilies embossed in silver on its sage-green curtains.

  “I suppose you generally sit there?” Gillian asked, with a strong sense of the maid of honour’s condescension in coming to ordinary dress-circle seats, with a schoolgirl, when she was accustomed to such an exalted place.

  “When I am in attendance on the Grand-Duchess and she comes; but I am off duty to-night,” smiled Mademoiselle de Monti, “and am looking forward to a pleasant evening with you, my dear, in a place where we shall not be stared at. Indeed, we can do the staring, if you wish, for the Grand-Duchess has sent word to the manager that she will be here this evening.”

  “Will she? How absolutely thrilling!” Gill said. “I say, it is good of you to have brought me. I never thought when you spoke of it that it would happen right away like this.”

  “Well, your friends at the Palace thought the very time it should happen was ‘right away,’ as you call it, while the life is still strange,” Mademoiselle de Monti told her kindly. “I am so glad you agree; besides, this is only to be the first of many pleasant evenings together, I hope; if the Baroness von Traume is willing. And so Berta could not come this evening?”

  “She wasn’t feeling well,” Gillian explained, rather awkwardly. She did not mean to give Berta away of course, but she could not make her voice sound as entirely natural as she could have wished. If it was partly Wingeld’s confectionery which had kept Berta away to-night, it was partly temper, and Gill knew it and particularly did not wish that Mademoiselle de Monti should know it too, at least not from her.

  “Another time we will hope she will not be so unlucky,” Mademoiselle de Monti said. “In the meantime, I am rather pleased to have you all to myself, Gillian. I would not let even Dick Cheshire use the third ticket; he is to meet us as we come out, and take us to supper at Estinotti’s, but I thought, as Berta could not come, we should be cosier just you and I together, and have a nice time for talking between the acts.”

  “How could you understand so exactly,” Gill cried gratefully. “Will the Grand-Duchess soon be here?” she added, for the magnificent orchestra was tuning up in preparation for the overture.

  “Not until the very last moment, I expect, if then,” Mademoiselle de Monti told her. “Monsieur Dellotte the Premier is dining with her, and he is a very old man and cannot be hurried. But she will come, for this is one of the best of the German opera companies, and the Lohengrin is reported to be the finest tenor in the world. Have you heard Lohengrin in England, Gillian?”

  “Never—no such luck!”

  “Ah! well, you are fortunate to hear it perfectly for the first time, as I hope you will. This opera-company has never before condescended to Chardille; only to Berlin and Paris, I understand.”

  “Berta will be mad that she didn’t … couldn’t … come,” Gill remarked, with conviction—“that is, unless she is about as little keen on music as on Shakespeare.”

  “I haven’t heard yet about your doings with your pupil,” Mademoiselle de Monti said, in her kind, interested way, and Gillian was just preparing to begin upon the story of her adventures, sure of sympathy, when somebody edged his way quickly and neatly past the people on the other side of Berta’s empty seat, and a familiar voice spoke to Gill and Mademoiselle de Monti.

  “Are you very anxious to keep that seat empty, because I am a quite respectable young man, honest, obedient, tractable, with good references and should really like to sit in it, if you don’t mind?”

  Much as Gillian liked Rupert-George she would have preferred Mademoiselle de Monti to herself; however, that lady smiled a welcome upon the newcomer.

  “Of course you are very welcome to it, Captain Cartaret. Berta von Traume, for whom it was intended, cannot come to-night—she is not well.”

  Rupert-George raised his eyebrows a little. “I did wonder if we were tempting Providence rather much by the length of time we left her to her own—no, Wingeld’s devices,” he observed confidentially aside to Gillian. “Never mind, I’m quite resigned, and I hope she is. There isn’t much mortality among Wingeld’s customers, I understand.”

  Gill laughed. Mademoiselle de Monti asked: “How did you know about my spare seat?”

  “Young Cheshire told me that the Baroness had ’phoned up to say that only Miss Gillian Courtney could come, and mentioned it opportunely just when I was being turned away by a stony-hearted janitor, with the information that there wasn’t a seat to be had. I’m afraid the old chap wasn’t following strictly in the little-hatchety footprints of George Washington, by the way, for do you notice there’s an empty seat as well behind Miss Gillian?”

  “Perhaps that is booked, and the owner is coming in late,” suggested Gabrielle de Monti. “That is much more likely than that a seat is left for such a company as this, and when the Grand-Duchess is coming too.”

  “Right! Lucky I bagged your seat instead of his or hers. I believe the owner of the place behind will turn out to be a German professor, who will follow
the score conscientiously from a book on his knee, all the time, and snort down our necks at frequent intervals.”

  “And I believe that it will turn out to be—” Mademoiselle de Monti evidently intended capping Rupert-George’s suggested neighbour with a more unpleasant one, when somebody pushed his way along the narrow space between the filled seats, and Captain Fritz von Posen sat down in the chair of dispute immediately behind Gillian.

  He bowed to Mademoiselle de Monti, whom he evidently knew; she made some civil remark, in answer, about the goodness of the opera company attracting all music-lovers, but did not introduce him to either of her companions. There would have been barely time for the introduction before the start of the overture, it is true; but Gillian fancied that it could have been squeezed in, if the maid of honour had wished it. She herself was devoutly thankful that Mademoiselle de Monti had not wished it; it was bad enough to have a Prussian officer behind her, able to hear all she said, without having to converse with him into the bargain. Anyhow, it was the end of all the pleasant confidential talking with Mademoiselle de Monti between the acts, to which she had been so much looking forward; but at least there was the opera, and neither Rupert-George nor Captain von Posen could take that away from her.

  The curtain rose, and still Carina did not come. Clearly the old Premier had been lengthy with his dinner. But Gillian was not able even to think much about Carina after that most wonderful of operas had begun. She listened and watched, enthralled; seeing nothing but the beautiful Elsa, forced to stand helpless by the river at Antwerp and listen to the repetition of the vile slander from which no knightly champion would stand forward to save her. And then there was a little rustle among the listening crowd upon the bank—a rustle that passed imperceptibly into the whisper: “A swan! A swan!”

  There were fingers pointing, and the helpless terror in the girl’s eyes passed into a look of dawning hope, as the whispers grew in force and number till they were a mighty shout of triumph: “A swan! A swan!” And down the shimmering river there sailed the great swan, with the tall young champion “Lohengrin.”