Wanted, an English Girl

by Moore, Dorothea

  Gillian had heard the cathedral chimes peal out more than once as she ate the simple meal and talked with little Toté in the kitchen. They rang out again, clear and yet mellow, the sound reverberating among the low rafters above her head, as she lay down upon Tienette’s spotless bed, with its soft quilt and sheets smelling of lavender. And that was the last sound that Gill heard for quite a long time, for she slept the sound sleep of a tired girl.

  CHAPTER XVI

  The Bridge of St. Odelle

  By rights Gill should have awakened to a sense that she had slept too long.

  She did nothing of the kind; but roused at last to a sense of dreamy comfort, which was not so much wakefulness as consciousness that she was not asleep.

  She lay still for some minutes, too entirely content even to wonder why the window had become long and latticed, and the foot of the bed altered its position and its shape. Her headache had gone, and so for the moment had all recollection of what had led to her presence here. She did not want to rouse herself to think; she only wanted to lie there in peace.

  She was roused with startling suddenness. Something seemed to crash, something that made the whole room swing and rock, and then the air was full of sound—sound that seemed chasing other sounds among the rafters, and charging into them with a resounding clang, mingling and parting again, in a dancing, bewildering circle of echoes.

  Gill sat up with a great jump; what could be the appalling din? Then, as her senses cleared, she knew it for the ringing of bells—the cathedral bells.

  Only had bells ever rung quite like that before? Gill sat upright on the bed, with her feet dangling over its high side, listening with a touch of awe.

  She was growing used to the sound and knew that half its strangeness was due to the echoes of which the old house in the narrow Rue des Carillons was so full. But that did not quite and altogether account for the oddness of the peal.

  It came upon her quite suddenly what it was. The bells were ringing backwards, and, out of a magazine article that she had once read, facts about bells began to float into her memory.

  “The ringing island,” Sir John Hawkins of Elizabethan days had called England, when he came sailing up the wide Thames, and heard the many church bells of London town; no, that wasn’t what she wanted. Bells were considered in old days a charm against malignant spirits; no, that wasn’t it either. She had it now; bells are rung backward, as witches are supposed to say their prayers, to warn of fire, flood or invasion.

  When Gill remembered that she got off the bed, smoothed her hair in front of Tienette’s little dusky old mirror, put on her hat and boots again and went into the next room.

  The remains of dinner were there, and it would seem as though the family had left the table with the meal unfinished, for half-emptied plates stood in the places.

  A young man was in the room, a young man whom Gill guessed at once to be the Bèrnard, who did not like Germans, Tienette’s Bèrnard. He was standing by her on the hearth; a tall, broad-shouldered young fellow, with an honest, ingenuous face that Gill approved at once. His arm was round Tienette, and she was leaning against his shoulder, with a look of absolute trust. Both appeared listening to Marie, who was standing in the centre of the room, with her out-door things on, trying to make her voice heard between the thunderous clashes of the bells.

  “Marie!” Gill said, and Marie ran to her.

  “Mademoiselle, I thank Heaven that you are safe and here.”

  “What has happened? Does the Baron …?”

  Gillian found the bells very interfering with conversation.

  Marie was, however, more used to them, and managed to tell what Gill most wished to know between the peals.

  “Mademoiselle, such confusion—such anger—the Baron and the Baroness in fury that Mademoiselle has disappeared, and still more angered …”

  The bells had it their own way for a minute, then Gill got in a question:

  “The Germans—have you heard anything?”

  “They approach; but Her Grand-Ducal Highness forbids that the neutrality of Insterburg be violated,” Bèrnard announced. “She motors to St. Odelle to bar the way to the invaders, and I … I only come here to acquaint Jean des Carillons and my Tienette with what happens, and then go to St. Odelle to help take care of her.”

  Something nearly choked Gill, a fierce desire to be a man like Bèrnard, that she too might be on the frontier helping to defend Carina.

  Tienette loosed her hold upon her lover and pushed him from her.

  “Go! go!” she urged. “Hasten, my Bèrnard! German soldiers are so rude—so rough—one may not trust them with anyone who cannot hit back. Hasten to the Duchess—ah! Mademoiselle, hear the bells that my father and the rest are ringing! That is to call every man in Chardille to rise up and stand behind our little Duchess when she tells the Germans that Insterburg is not a road.”

  “Will she stop them? How utterly splendid? What do they want? Is it Belgium they’re invading or France, and …”

  “No one knows, Mam’selle,” Bèrnard told her. “They spoke of French soldiers from Insterburg having violated German territory, but that is all a lie; the Burgomaster has put up a notice to tell us so. They say that papers have been found at Estinotti’s giving a choice of lies to make the reason for a violation of our country. Ah! but they are good liars. …”

  “At Estinotti’s?”

  “There was a police raid there, while Mademoiselle must have been sleeping,” Marie explained eagerly. “Monsieur le Baron and Madame la Baronne are both arrested on account of papers found there, and are guarded by police in their own house. Mademoiselle must understand that Estinotti was no Italian, but a German, and it now appears that Monsieur le Baron and Madame also are German spies.”

  “And they’re arrested?” Gill could hardly believe it.

  “Yes, Mademoiselle, and none allowed out from the house. They would not have permitted me to come here, but the gentleman who came from the Palace to fetch you questioned me where you could be and …”

  “A gentleman came for me? Oh, who was he?” Gill cried. So she had not been forgotten, even in the midst of all these wonderful and exciting happenings. “What was his name?”

  Marie did not know, but her description of him as young, very young and merry, and often with the Grand-Duchess, made Gill sure that it could be no other than Dick Cheshire.

  “Did you tell him I was here? Oh, of course you didn’t know,” she said. “What an idiot I am!”

  Marie had only told Dick what the household knew, that the English young lady had managed to get through the cupboard between the two rooms, which had had most of the partition removed for the purpose of replacing it with a more solid one; and had so escaped by the Baron’s room and the outside staircase. The gentleman had been very anxious to find the English young lady, Marie said, but he could not wait—Gill guessed that he was going with Carina to St. Odelle—and so had desired the police to let the Insterburger girl out that she might search for Mademoiselle.

  “Did you remember that you had told me your address, and about your people being pleased to see me?” Gill asked her; “for you couldn’t have known that I should meet Tienette by chance, and that she would be so good to me.”

  “I remembered that Mademoiselle was a stranger to Chardille and could not know many here as yet,” Marie said simply. “And I desired, if she were not here, to pray the good God to put it in my heart where she could be, and one prays better in the house where one first learned to say one’s prayers, does not Mademoiselle think it so?”

  Gill felt a little embarrassed by the question; an English girl would probably not have had the courage to speak openly of asking for God’s help in a difficulty. “They’re a great deal better than I am, these two,” she thought, with a sudden access of humility.

  Not that there was much time for thinking anything. The explaining, such as it was, had been all done in surprisingly few minutes, and Tienette was holding the heavy door open for he
r lover, with a brave smile.

  “There go, Bèrnard! Her Highness will have need of all her friends.”

  Bèrnard kissed her quite openly and simply before everyone. “Rest thyself, dear one; do not trouble.”

  He was gone, to join the hurrying throng of men from the workshops, who were surging down the Rue des Carillons, tumbling over each other in their haste to reach the bigger stream that could be heard in the wider streets of the new town.

  “À St. Odelle! À St. Odelle!” they were shouting, and now and then there came a deeper, angrier note: “A bas les Allemands!”

  Tienette stood looking after him with wistful blue eyes.

  “Will there be fighting?” Gill asked, rather awestruck.

  Marie shook her head. “Mademoiselle, we cannot fight Germany. We are so small—one mouthful and we should be gone. But our neutrality is guaranteed, and they cannot pass our frontiers unless we have already broken the treaty. And Insterburgers keep their promises.”

  The baby in the carved wooden cradle began to cry piteously, and Tienette moved forward rather mechanically to take her up. Marie was already clearing the half-finished meal with neatness and despatch.

  “Let me take the baby, or wash up for you—or something,” Gillian begged. “I’m quite fresh now, thanks to the long rest, and you’re so tired, Tienette. And it’s no good my going to the Palace till the Grand-Duchess has settled the Germans and come back from the frontier, so I might just as well make myself of a little use here. Do let me!”

  There must have been something very convincing about Gill’s last “Do let me,” for Tienette smiled and put the warm bundle of sleeping babyhood into her arms. “Mademoiselle is so good. It is true that I have my lace to finish.”

  “And you have stood long enough and too long,” Marie interrupted anxiously. “Sit in the father’s chair, Tienette, and rest yourself, and if Mademoiselle in her goodness will nurse the little cabbage here till I have washed the dishes …”

  Gill interrupted. To tell the truth she was terrified of babies, and this tiny brown-eyed Insterburger was puckering up her face, as though she had every intention of showing what she could do in the way of yelling when she chose.

  “Do let me wash up instead,” she entreated. “I know I can do that all right, and I’m not used to babies really, and I know this one won’t like me—look at her now.”

  The dismay in the English girl’s voice actually made Tienette laugh. She wished to take the baby from poor Gill, but to let Marie wash up; only Gill stuck firmly to her point, declaring that she wanted to do something and wouldn’t stay at all unless she might help. Finally, Marie covered her up in a big blue apron of Tienette’s and took her to the back part of the immense old room, where, behind a rude screen, there was a sort of sink-like arrangement where washing-up might be done.

  Gillian got to work with a will, hearing through all her splashing the pleasant, homely sounds from behind the screen; the click of the bobbins; the soft murmur of the girls’ voices; Marie singing a lullaby to the baby.

  The bells had long ceased to ring, and the world seemed oddly quiet without their stupendous din. All the hurrying footsteps had ceased too, and the Petite Rue des Carillons might have been sleeping in the shadows.

  Gill listened to the words of Marie’s lullaby—roughly translated from their queer patois French, they ran thus:–

  “Sleep well, little angel—

  The little baby Jèsu slept,

  Cradled where the kine were kept.

  Bleating and lowing round His cradle,

  To break His sweet sleep were not able.

  Safe on His mother’s breast

  He lay at rest.

  Sleep well, thou little angel.”

  Marie’s voice was very sweet, and she sang the old lullaby over again and again till the baby’s fretful crying had altogether ceased.

  “She is asleep,” Gill heard Tienette say.

  “I think so; I will take one more turn with her; then I will sing no more.”

  The outer door opened; there was a flood of sunshine in the dark corner where Gill was busy. A voice spoke—the voice of Tienette’s father, though it was a voice so changed that she scarcely knew it.

  “The Germans are upon us!”

  Gill came out, holding her dish-cloth, unconscious that she was doing so. Tienette stood up, her hand to her side, and not a dash of colour in her face. Toté ran from the inner room and clung to Tienette’s skirt. Marie held the baby close against her breast. The eyes of all except the children were fastened upon the bearer of evil tidings.

  “The Germans!”

  Only Tienette breathed instead the question “Bèrnard?”

  “He brought the news—he never got to St. Odelle; it was over before he had well cleared Chardille. It was all a vile German plot from first to last, as the burgomaster told us, honest gentleman! They wanted him to distribute their lying manifestos about the town, when, mark you, it was too late to resist, and would have bribed him to the task if he had not cut the offer short on their lips.

  “‘Take your lies back to the Father of them,’ he said; ‘the neutrality of Insterburg has been violated for no honest reason. We may be forced to submit, but we’re not forced to be fooled by you.’”

  “What was the manifesto?” Gill asked eagerly. Even in her anxiety about Carina she could not help wanting to know that.

  “A paper filled with lies about French troops—who are not in Insterburg and never have been—attacking German troops upon our side of the frontier. And on that lie they dare to enter Insterburg—an independent Duchy—and command that we refrain from putting any difficulties in the way of the invaders!”

  The old man’s tone was so fierce that Gillian thought Tienette had some reason for her white face and frightened look.

  “Father, you will not resist?”

  “It is useless. And this is to be a ‘friendly occupation,’ so the rascally cur of an officer had the face to assure our Grand-Duchess, when she confronted him at the bridge of St. Odelle, and forbade him to come further. Ah! but she is a gallant little princess! She was like a rock before all those Germans (sniggering among themselves, they were, and as insolent as they dared to be) defending her territory, suffering no one else to take the task upon their shoulders. It was a sight to send men to their knees in shame that they had dreamed of so insulting her by entering her country. … But the German officer, he is no man …”

  “They did not hurt her?” Something seemed to go red-hot in Gillian’s brain.

  “The holy saints guard her, I trust not! But they pushed her by main force from the bridge, the brutes. …”

  “Didn’t anybody …” the question stuck in Gillian’s throat.

  “The young Englishman threw himself upon the fiend who dared to touch her—he was thrown down—she gave way then, and asked the German commandant to let him go and she would make no further resistance. She was afraid for the gentleman, you see, for he had struck the commandant, and these Germans they do not understand the generous blow in defence of a woman.”

  “Then the Germans are really here?” Marie said, with an apprehensive glance at Tienette, which at another time would have struck Gillian as oddly protective to come from the younger sister. “How long will it take them to pass through, my father?”

  “Till Insterburg has ceased to be their gate into Belgium,” answered a fresh voice at the open door. “Jean Werpen, commonly called Jean des Carillons, owner of three rooms on the ground floor of 3, Petite Rue des Carillons—you will be prepared to billet, during the pleasure of the commandant, eight of the first troops who have crossed the bridge of St. Odelle!”

  CHAPTER XVII

  Friendly Occupation

  The speaker was an officer in a very smart uniform. He had a paper in his hand, from which he had read the description of Tienette’s father. He did not dismount from his horse, but kept it at the door, and, except when he was reading, he had his hard blue eyes fixed upon the li
ttle group inside, with a paralysing stare.

  “Your family, old man?” he asked at last.

  “Yes, monsieur.” Jean had probably forgotten Gillian, and her big apron and the dish-cloth in her hands made her not so unlike the rest.

  “Well, you have some pretty daughters; you had better give no trouble for their sakes,” said the officer significantly. “The soldiers will be here in half an hour; see they are well taken care of. You have no son?” again consulting the paper.

  “I am his son,” Toté announced, with unexpected courage.

  The officer gave one contemptuous glance at the little thin boy; then went on as though he had not heard him. “But a young man—Bèrnard Séderon—damn these French names!—frequents your house as a suitor to one of your daughters. He is to report himself within two hours at the house of the Baron von Traume in the Rue St. Denise, to sign a paper putting himself under martial law during the time of the German occupation. Within two hours, or he will be arrested.”

  The officer favoured the girls with another stare, and then clattered on to the next house, without so much as a good-day.

  Directly he had gone Gill knew why it was that his face had not been unfamiliar to her. He was one of the men she had seen on the dreadful occasion when she fell into the smoking-room at Estinotti’s.

  Not that the discovery meant much to her just then, for poor Tienette had dropped into her father’s big chair, with a tearless sob.

  “Bèrnard!” she said. “Bèrnard and martial law. They will shoot him if he angers them, and Bèrnard is not patient.”

  Gill was down upon her knees beside the poor girl in a minute. “Don’t, Tienette; it’s bad enough, goodness knows, but it’s not as bad as that. It’s only a silly red-tape form, I expect—we’ve heaps of them in England, only we don’t swank over it, and Bèrnard is the sensible sort, I’m sure. He won’t do anything to make them wild when he knows how frightfully important it is for you. It isn’t war, you see; it’s what that—that conceited pig would call ‘friendly occupation.’”