Dick looked quickly at her. “All right. I’ll take you”; and he and Gillian hurried together after the little group of Germans, with Tienette’s lover a prisoner in their midst.
Curiously enough the girl did not feel nervous. Marie’s fervent “The saints will reward Mademoiselle” was in her ears all the way, and seemed to take away all sense of fear and set it at an incalculable distance from her.
Dick was looking pale and tired and his arm was in a sling. Gill asked what was the matter. “Dislocated my shoulder at St. Odelle. It’s all right; they’ve put it back.”
“Tienette’s father brought word that you defended the Grand-Duchess—”
“Defended her? A plucky lot of use I was,” Dick burst out, with bitterness. “This affair has been arranged for ages and all their plans laid, so that nothing we could do was the smallest use.”
“The Duchess barred the bridge, didn’t she?”
“Put her car across the end of it, and forbade them to pass. They dragged her from her place—I tried to throw the brute out of the car …”
“And couldn’t you?”
“It was the other way on, damn it all! Oh, I beg ten thousand pardons, that slipped out. He threw me overboard, and my shoulder was dislocated, although I got on to the chap again. Carina saw that I was getting the worst of it, and … she let them pass then.”
“You oughtn’t to be out,” Gill said, with conviction. “I am sure your shoulder is hurting horribly.”
“Wanted to see after you,” Dick said, with the gruffness with which boys and men appear to think it needful to receive sympathy on the subject of aches and pains.
“Awfully nice of you, but you should have got somebody else to do that.”
“Anverra wanted to be after you as soon as he’d done his work,” Dick acknowledged. “But of course he wouldn’t have known you. And Mademoiselle de Monti was quite wild. But the streets aren’t possible for girls just now, so, of course … and I meant to, anyhow. I’m to take you to the Palace.”
That announcement would have sent Gill into the seventh heaven of delight a few minutes ago; just now she could not rejoice in anything while Bèrnard’s life hung in the balance.
“Thank you ever so much; but I don’t think you ought to go on with me to poor Bèrnard’s trial. Now I know it’s all right to come I’ll take a taxi to the Palace.”
“I daresay. Do you think you would get one, or that I have the smallest intention of allowing you to go about Chardille as things are, alone?”
The decision and the serious tone were equally unlike Dick. Gill stared at the boy, feeling as though he were almost a stranger to her. It certainly was not only the pallor and tired expression that so altered his face. The boyishness seemed somehow to have departed.
“I am sure you had better not stand about, waiting for poor Bèrnard’s trial, which may take ages,” she suggested, hoping that she did not sound too much as though she hoped he would not take her at her word.
Dick’s voice became a little graver even than before.
“No, they settle these things out of hand,” he said.
It certainly was not easy to talk in the Chardille streets that day; Gill had never seen such a pack anywhere in all her life. Fresh troops from St. Odelle were pouring in before the first lot were half billeted. Those of the Insterburgers who were not in their houses attending to their forced guests were hurrying hither and thither, ordered a dozen different ways. On both sides there was haste, but on the side of the invaded it was an indignant driven haste—on that of the invaders the blatant hurry of men who have won the first move in the game and are racing for the second.
To move in the crush was almost as difficult as to talk in it, and Gillian felt very much afraid for Dick’s damaged shoulder. But she said no more about his leaving her, for it had dawned upon her by this time that she could not make her way alone; and Bèrnard’s life was in the balance.
Bèrnard’s escort stopped before the Town Hall, and the corporal went inside to make inquiries. The crush was rather less here, and Dick took the opportunity to say:
“There’s a chance they mayn’t want to make things more unpleasant between the Grand-Duchess and themselves. We had better play your belonging to her household.”
“I wish I did,” Gill said. “But they’ll know I don’t, won’t they?”
“Not they. You’ve sacked yourself, or something, from the Baron’s, and I’m certainly taking you back to the Palace. That’s good enough for commandants and such-like cattle.”
The corporal returned. Gill had been edging nearer to Bèrnard, intending to repeat Dick’s cheering remark to him, and she was near enough to hear the corporal’s order:
“To the house of the Baron von Traume.”
Bèrnard was marched round. “It’s the Baron’s house,” Gill said to Dick, who had not heard.
He whistled. “You’re going on?”
“Of course,” Gill answered, with outward courage.
“Well, you’ve got some pluck,” was Dick’s comment. “Of course I shan’t leave you,” he added, and that was a comfort.
They—the soldiers, with poor Bèrnard, in front, and Gill and Dick following behind—turned up the street so familiar to Gillian.
It seemed extremely odd to stand once more at the front door to which Mademoiselle de Monti had brought her only two days ago. Gill wondered if there ever had been such endless days in all the world before, and then roused herself again to the grim present. Bèrnard, Tienette’s Bèrnard, was in danger of death, and his only chance lay in her evidence. She must keep all her wits about her.
The door of the dining-room was open, and several people were sitting at the table, but they were not eating, though wine stood upon it. A military-looking person, in a tightly-buttoned uniform, sat at the head; Gill’s old enemy the Baron was on his right. The others were chiefly soldiers, and at least half the number were occupied with papers that looked like reports and maps.
The corporal spoke to someone at the door of the dining-room, and what he said was evidently passed on to the tightly-buttoned personage at the head of the table.
A sharp order came back to the corporal, and his little party moved towards the door of the dining-room.
They did not go in, but the military person and the Baron got up from their chairs and came to the doorway.
The military personage spoke to the Baron, “You know the prisoner?”
“Bèrnard Séderon, aged twenty-two years, working at a furniture-maker’s; a propagandist of rebellion against German supremacy,” the Baron quoted glibly. “I know the fellow, my dear Colonel.”
“Your work, Baron, is always most admirable and thorough,” the Colonel said. “Charge against the man, Corporal?”
The corporal deposed to the assault on the Prussian officer, whose name Gill now learned to be Captain von Sploshheimer, and to the fact that he had died almost immediately, as the result of the fall. No mention whatever was made of any provocation; Gill slipped from Dick’s side.
“Bitte …” she began, but Dick pulled her back. “Let me tackle them as far as my German lasts,” he whispered, and addressed himself to the Colonel, with great politeness but in German that would have made Gill weep with laughter at another time.
He begged to inform the Colonel that he was of the Household of the Grand-Duchess, and ventured to interfere in the matter because …
At this point, between wrath on Bèrnard’s behalf and a consciousness that the Colonel was regarding him with the intense superciliousness that can be achieved by a Prussian officer but by no other being on God’s earth, Dick’s already shaky German became hopelessly fogged among verbs and genders, and Gill saw that she must rush into the breach.
She stepped in front of Dick, hearing a startled exclamation from the Baron as she did so, and made the speech which she had been mentally preparing while Dick stumbled through the explanation of his presence there.
“I had to come, because I was afraid t
he corporal wouldn’t tell you everything. I was there and saw it all. The—the prisoner had to knock Captain von Sploshheimer down; you would have done the same, I suppose, if an Insterburger was ill-treating one of your girls, when it is called a friendly occupation.”
“Of neutral territory,” Dick added hastily, having evidently grasped the drift of her last sentence.
The Colonel looked exceedingly annoyed, and whispered something to the Baron, who nodded, and then whispered back.
Gill didn’t care. She had seen Dick noiselessly clap his hands; she had seen Bèrnard’s honest eyes raised with a look of dawning hope. She had seen that her appeal to the alleged “friendliness” of the German occupation had had some effect at least, and that Dick’s emendation had strengthened it. Then the Baron spoke, and her hopes were dashed to the ground.
“The witness of this English girl need hardly be considered, I think, my dear Colonel. She is an employé of my own, dismissed as unsatisfactory.”
“Ach! so! then there is no more to be said in the case of Bèrnard Séderon,” the Colonel was beginning, when Gill interrupted passionately:
“You can’t be so horribly unfair. Baron, you know I dismissed myself, and if I hadn’t—Bèrnard had to defend the girl he cares for, and”—(with a brilliant inspiration)—“the Grand-Duchess, with whom I am to stay, shall hear of all this. She is already interested in the family, and has given a prize to the youngest boy, and—”
The Colonel had glanced again at the Baron, who raised his eyebrows slightly.
“The prisoner is to be taken out at once and shot in the Square,” directed the Colonel, interrupting Gillian at this point without ceremony. “See that the murder of Captain Eitel von Sploshheimer is duly recorded against him, Baron, if you please.”
He turned on his heel. Gill felt giddy. She knew she tried to run after him, but that Dick held her back with authority, while he made a feverish though halting reference to the Grand-Duchess’s certain anger.
The Colonel cut him short, with a contemptuous direction to mind his own business, and slammed the door of the dining-room.
“Mademoiselle will not trouble herself more,” Bèrnard said, as Gill looked dumbly at him. “She has been so good, and she will, I know, be good too to my Tienette, and by and by my Tienette will be glad, as I am, for the sake of other girls, that I killed that devil.”
They marched him out then.
He went, with his head up.
Gill watched him till he disappeared through the door, Tienette’s lover—going to his death. She did not cry; that was for afterwards.
Dick spoke to her. She had a fancy that he had spoken two or three times before she realised what he said.
“Come on, I’m going to have you out of this.”
Gill let him take her hand as though she were a child and lead her to the door.
“Where … where are we going?” she asked dully.
“To the Grand-Duchess. Come on!” Dick was almost fierce.
“I must go back first to the Rue des Carillons. I must tell Tienette,” Gill said, and then, as the remembrance of what it was she had to tell came over her, she stopped short. “Oh, I can’t!”
“I’ll do all that, only come on!” urged Dick, and she came.
She had a dull idea that the Baron suddenly appeared at the door and spoke to her and her companion; but the Baron had ceased to count a great deal now. She heard Dick talking from a long way off; he was telling the Baron that Miss Courtney was now under the protection of the Grand-Duchess. But she found it impossible to attend very much, even though the subject of their conversation so concerned herself. She supposed that Dick, whose tones had grown curiously and frigidly polite, would arrange for her somehow—and Tienette was waiting—listening—praying—in the dark house in the Rue des Carillons.
“Very well, Miss Courtney,”—the Baron was suave now, not the angry person she had somehow fancied that he would be when she met him again. “Go to her Grand-ducal Highness now by all means. But we will say au revoir, not good-bye.”
Gillian made no answer, and went out with Dick into the wide street. As they came down the steps together a sharp volley of musketry rang out, coming from the direction of the Egmont Square.
Gill stopped short, physically unable to go on for a moment. She knew what that sound must mean. Dick patted her shoulder gently enough.
“Buck up, do! Poor chap! But you did everything you could for him, you know, and were jolly plucky the way you stood up to those brutes. Don’t cry now, anyway; wait till you get to Carina.”
“I’m not going to cry,” Gill told him. “Only they were all so happy in that nice queer house—Tienette and … and Bèrnard and Toté and all.”
Her voice broke, and she and Dick went to the Rue des Carillons in silence.
Marie was watching for them outside the house; they saw her trim little figure as they entered the street.
“I’ll tell them for you, shall I?” Dick said compassionately; but Gill shook her head.
Marie must have read the news in her look. She came up the road to meet Gill, the bright colour dying out of her pretty face.
“Mademoiselle, it is?”
“They’ve shot him, the murderers!” Gill jerked out desperately. “Oh, Marie—Tienette!
“My father had from the first no hope, Mademoiselle,” Marie said. “He knows the Germans.”
Gill went into the house. It was not so many hours since Tienette had brought her there to rest; but it seemed the length of two lifetimes.
As she had seen him first, the old bell-ringer sat before the fire, but now, in place of watching the pot, his grey head was bowed, and his eyes fixed on vacancy.
Before the cupboard knelt little Toté, among the crushed and broken remains of his beloved toys. He was not crying, but examining the extent of the mischief with an odd unchildlike patience, only now and then stealing a wistful glance in the direction of Tienette, hitherto his consoler in all troubles.
Tienette was sitting on a low stool by the baby’s cradle, rocking it slowly to and fro, and singing, very softly, Marie’s song. Her beautiful eyes looked dazed and unseeing, and she had not yet repaired the disorder of her dress, which gave her a very strange appearance in Gill’s eyes.
She never stopped her singing nor her rocking as the two girls came in. The words, in her sweet low voice, sweeter even than Marie’s, made Gill’s eyes prick and smart at the contrast.
“The little baby Jesu slept,
Cradled where the kine were kept.
Bleating and lowing round His cradle,
To break His sweet sleep were not able …”
“Tienette!” Gill said, and then she went and knelt beside the girl, putting both arms tightly round her, and so—gave her Bèrnard’s last message.
CHAPTER XVIII
A Court Appointment
It was about an hour later that Gill drove up to the entrance of the Grand-ducal palace, for the second time.
Dick had managed to procure a taxi, but the going had been very slow, on account of the many times when a uniformed official stopped the cab and demanded, “Name, residence, and business?”
However, they were here at last; not that it seemed to matter nearly so much as Gill had expected, for her thoughts were with her friends in the Rue des Carillons.
She really wanted to stay with them, but Dick would not hear of it. He insisted that she would do the best thing possible for them by coming straight to the Grand-Duchess and asking her to use her influence for the prevention of further billeting in that house at least. He told Gill that he believed the invaders wished to keep an outward show of civility towards the ruler of Insterburg, although they would not show mercy towards any act of rebellion to their authority, and that view made it more possible to leave poor Tienette.
She had her sister, for Marie would never go back to the Von Traumes again; but Gill knew that the person who had been with Bèrnard at the last, and done even her unsuccessful best to
fight for his life, must be something to Tienette. Still she had to go, and it was the easier that Dick looked thoroughly worn out and ought to be in bed, she was certain. Only she could not feel the same wild happiness at the thought of seeing and speaking with Carina that such a thought would have roused in her earlier in the day. All these horrors seemed to have burnt it out, as it were.
Dick took her through the hall, only stopping to ask the footman, who took Gill’s hold-all, “Where is Her Grand-ducal Highness?”
The man answered that Her Grand-ducal Highness was closeted with Monsieur Dellotte, Monsieur Anverra and the Burgomaster in the Round Library.
“And Mademoiselle de Monti?” Dick asked.
The man believed that Mademoiselle de Monti was in attendance on Her Grand-ducal Highness. Dick whistled softly.
“Shall I find Mademoiselle Pipignon for you?”
“No, don’t, please,” Gill said. “I would much rather sit down quietly somewhere where I shan’t be in the way, and just wait. I’m rather afraid of Mademoiselle Pipignon.”
“So am I, by Jove,” Dick agreed, with the nearest approach to a laugh that she had seen in him to-day. “Come along to the shell drawing-room; no one will bother us there, I expect, and we will catch the Grand-Duchess when she comes out of council.”
He took Gill to a long room, where the walls were entirely patterned in a wonderful mosaic of tiny shells, which it must have taken a lifetime to collect. When the room was lit up their delicate transparency was all rose-tinted, but just now there were no lights there, and in the fading of the long summer daylight they only shimmered faintly, like a waning moon.
Small tables, inlaid with mother-o’-pearl, to carry out the idea of the room, gleamed ghostily through the dimness: there did not seem to be a superfluity of really comfortable furniture, Gill thought.
“This will do as well to wait in as anywhere else, won’t it?” Dick asked her. “A beastly uncomfortable hole, I always call it; but we can hear people come out of the Round Library if we leave the door open.”
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