And when they came back to the Palace, Carina, usually so indomitable, cried and cried and cried.
Tienette was specially in Gillian’s mind to-day, as she dried her plates, for Carina had promised her to call at Tienette’s home on the way back to the Palace.
Some of the German officers had been shooting beyond the city and had sent game to the Grand-Duchess. Gill had an idea that she would have been glad to refuse it scornfully; but she could not do that, and finally divided it between the Hospital and various other places in need of extra food.
“And a couple of the pheasants shall go to your friend in the Rue des Carillons,” she told Gill, “and we will take them ourselves, as we come back from the hospital, and then the old father will not think it charity.”
Gillian had been very grateful for the suggestion; she knew that times were bad now in the old house by the cathedral, though the girls said little, when she went to see them, and Jean des Carillons even less.
But Toté had confided to her that they had no meat now, not even on Sundays. This was hardly surprising considering the almost prohibitive price of ordinary food, since the German occupation had caused such a shortage of supplies; but Gillian could not feel that Tienette at least was in a fit state to stand privation.
Paid work was exceedingly difficult to obtain, and one of the first acts of the German Commandant had been to lay a terrific fine on the ringer of each bell that had warned the Chardille folk of the invasion of their country. All the contents of the thick grey knitted stocking, in which the careful Insterburger keeps a little hoard for emergencies, had not been sufficient to meet the price of Jean Werpen’s patriotism, and he had been reduced to borrowing from a money-lender, at a fabulous rate of interest. Toté was Gill’s informant there as well, but though she carried the story to the Grand-Duchess, old Jean would not allow her to pay off the money-lender for him. He had a sturdy dislike to any form of charity, and it was for the understanding of this fact that Gill was so specially grateful to Carina.
For all his stubborn pride Jean des Carillons could not feel hurt if the Grand-Duchess herself brought the pheasants for his daughter; Gill was sure of that.
She finished drying her last plate, and was pulling off her splashed apron, with its wide red cross, as Carina appeared in the doorway of the dark little scullery.
“Ready, Gill?”
CHAPTER XX
The Return of Prince Waldemar
Carina’s motor was waiting at the door of the hospital, with Mademoiselle Pipignon sitting bolt upright in it, like a grenadier.
“Pipchen! I hoped you were in bed and asleep after being up all last night at the hospital, and this morning attending me when I saw the Commandant,” remonstrated the Grand-Duchess.
“If you imagine, Ma’am,—my dear, that I intend to allow you to go about in a town occupied by Germans, with no better protection than Gillian’s, you are very much mistaken,” Mademoiselle Pipignon said, with immense decision.
“We are going in to the Werpens’,” Carina told her gently. “Indeed, you should not have troubled, Pipchen dear. I want to grow accustomed to taking care of myself, you know.”
“You won’t while I’m above ground, Ma’am,” Mademoiselle Pipignon announced. “As to sleep, a woman of my age doesn’t need much.”
That was all. Not one word about the extra trouble for her tired old self entailed by the visit to the Petite Rue des Carillons. Gillian, as she jumped into the car and sat down beside Mademoiselle and opposite Carina, could not but remember another drive with her, when she had been far from guessing how really good and kind Mademoiselle Pipignon could be for all the barbed-wire fencing of her ordinary manner.
If Gill had known Carina’s governess, then, as the last three months had taught her to know “Pipchen,” she would not have been afraid to go straight to the Palace when she escaped from the Baron’s house. Only, in that case, she never would have known the household in the Rue des Carillons, so perhaps it was all for the best.
“We won’t keep you long, Pipchen dear,” Carina said, with compunction, as the car steered its way, with infinite difficulty, through the thread-like street, and Gill jumped out almost before it stopped, eager to knock at once and waste no time.
There was no need to knock; the door stood ajar. Gill called, “Tienette!”
There was a sound of hurrying footsteps in the kitchen; the heavy door was pulled back as though it were of a feather weight.
Tienette stood framed in the doorway. There was a dash of colour in the cheeks which had been so white when Gill saw her last, and the blue eyes, which had grown so large and hollow, were like stars.
She held out both hands with a little low laugh of happiness.
“You have come, Bèrnard! and you are so late—so late in coming that they told me you were dead. But of course I knew that was not true, and you have come—and all the lamps are lit.”
Gill had never heard such utter joyousness in any voice before.
It was all in a minute. Carina had only just stepped from her car; Marie, running from the inner room, with consternation on her face, had not had time to reach her sister; when Tienette, still laughing softly from sheer pleasure, fell forward on her face across the threshold, where Gill had first heard of her, sitting at her bobbins in the sunshine.
Marie was down beside her in a second with a piteous cry, calling to her, crying to her to “Come back.” But old Jean des Carillons, coming quickly at the sound, only looked once, and then, stooping, lifted the light little figure, as though Tienette were a child, and carried her through to the inner room, laying her on the bed where Gill herself had once slept.
“Is she dead?” Carina asked softly, and Marie’s tears came then.
“Yes, Madame and Mademoiselle, she is dead, my Tienette, and I should thank the good God for it. For indeed there was no getting well for her, and I have seen her wasting day by day—and, Mademoiselle, she did not recollect—she took strange fancies—and one could do nothing! And to-day she would have it that Bèrnard was not dead, but was coming as of old to fetch her for a little walk when his work was done. She loved the bright lights always, my Tienette, when all the shops were gay. So the door must stand open, that she might hear when Bèrnard called—and Madame and Mamzelle saw …”
Gill was past speaking. She put her arm round Marie and kissed her silently; she was seeing before her mental vision the happy home that had been when she saw it first, before the Huns had entered Chardille to bring desolation.
There beside the hearth the father had been sitting watching the pot for his daughter. “Is that my little Tienette? ” she could hear again the glad welcome in his voice.
The baby sleeping in her great carved cradle; little Toté working so busily and happily at his father’s feet—the homely meal making ready, that could not be enjoyed till Bèrnard was there to share it.
She heard Carina’s soft voice as from a long way off:
“My poor Marie, I wish that I could take the troubles of my people, my poor brave people, on my own shoulders and bear them for you! But for your Tienette, I think we must give thanks for one who has been called out of the darkness to where it is all light.”
“Madame speaks truth,” sobbed Marie, “and Mademoiselle Gillian will assure her that I am not ungrateful; but I have taken thought for my beautiful Tienette since we were more young than Toté here; since first one learned that she was not strong as other children.”
“To what purpose was this waste? ” The familiar words came to Gill then, and with it the remembrance that One, for whom the seeming waste was made, saw further than the seeming. Bèrnard Séderon had held his life well given that other girls might be spared what Tienette had borne; perhaps a bigger purpose than one could see, before the lamps were lit, was being served in some inexplicable way by all this misery.
She listened to Carina; to the girl who might never think about herself or her own feelings for one moment, but always the effect upon the
people of her Duchy.
“It is in especial hard for you, my poor Marie; but all the love you wrapped her round with could not keep trouble from Tienette; only God can do that.”
Carina had struck the right note in appealing to Marie’s unselfishness, Gill saw, even though the poor girl only said, “Thank you, Madame.”
They could not wait; poor Mademoiselle Pipignon, dragooning her own sleepiness in the car, must be considered. Only Gill whispered: “Might one—just go in to say good-bye to Tienette?”
Marie led the way into the bedroom. Jean had not stirred from it since he had carried in his favourite child, but stood still at the foot of the bed, gazing at her fixedly, as though he could not take his eyes away. Gill noticed in that moment how much older he had grown than the vigorous, upright person who had welcomed her to his house with such splendid courtesy only three months ago. He stooped now, and his hair from iron grey had turned to white.
He took no notice of the girls; it did not seem to strike him as strange or unusual that the Grand-Duchess should be there in his house. He only stood and looked.
The smile was still on Tienette’s face, and she looked beautiful—as lovely, Gillian thought, as she had ever looked in life. The wandering look had gone from her eyes; they could not doubt that for her now all the lamps were lit again.
Gill kissed her forehead gently and came out into the firelit kitchen.
Little Toté was busy at his cupboard door; she spoke to him softly. The little fellow ran to her.
“You will be extra good to Marie now, won’t you, Toté,” she said, “for she will be very lonely.”
“I will. I will carve all my funniest little beasts to make her laugh,” the little boy assured her, and then he held out something on the palm of his scrap of a hand.
“Mademoiselle, behold, it is my little ass for you, to keep for your very own.”
“Toté, it’s dear of you, but I couldn’t take it, really,” Gill said, with an arm round him. “It is so beautifully made; when the war is over you must send it to England and sell it for a lot of money.”
Toté shook his head. “But no, Mamzelle, I meant to keep this little beast for evermore to make my dear Tienette laugh; now she will never laugh again, and behold I wish that the kind English Mamzelle has it.”
“Gillian!” Carina called softly, and Gill kissed the little wistful face upturned to hers.
“I will keep it always, Toté,” she said, and followed the Grand-Duchess to the car, where Mademoiselle Pipignon still sat immovable, wooden, and a model of deportment.
Carina held out both hands to her, as the door was shut behind Gill and the car glided on.
“Oh, Pipchen, comfort us!” she said, and, just for a minute, Gill saw the other Carina, the Carina who was really very young, and rather lonely, and rather afraid, in place of the dignified, contained little ruler, to whom even a high-born German found it difficult to be rude.
Mademoiselle Pipignon showed another side as well. She drew her royal pupil close and kissed her there, in the darkness and utter seclusion of the Rue des Carillons. “There, there! my dear; there is no one to see, and it will make you better,” she said, with little comforting pats that came oddly from someone usually so wooden and dignified. “Don’t try to keep it in—never mind your old Pipchen, nor Gillian, who is a good girl and understands. Just now, dear; before we get into the main streets with their lights.”
At another time Mademoiselle Pipignon’s idea that tears could be turned on and off at will would have seemed funny to Gillian. Just now there was nothing funny about Mademoiselle Pipignon, because of the very real kindness that showed through all she said.
The unusual sympathy was certainly a help to the poor little Grand-Duchess, even though she only kept her head down on “Pipchen’s” portly shoulder for a moment.
“Why, of course I don’t mind you or Gill—my very best of friends,” she said, trying to smile. “I … I am silly, that is all, and selfish too, for poor Gill feels it more than I do. Pipchen, she died as we came in—that poor pretty girl whose lover was murdered by the Germans for defending her honour, on the night when they first occupied the town—and they are all my people—and I can do nothing … nothing, except try very hard to look and speak as Monsieur Dellotte advises, and never to show what I really feel.”
They were coming into the wider and lighter streets, and the Grand-Duchess was drawing down her veil to hide her tear-stained face. Her fingers were trembling, and Gill turned to help, with a hot desire to do something—anything—to comfort her.
“Don’t—please, Ma’am,” she entreated. “At least the Germans know you’re not under their thumbs, and so they have to mind a bit what you say, though they do stick lies about your ‘strong German sympathies’ in their hateful, lying rags. …”
Carina put her hand over Gill’s with a quick affectionate gesture, as the younger girl finished with the veil.
“Thank you, Gill dear; you are always cheering. I suppose here and there, in scattered cases that I know about, my personal request does do some good, as if the Germans wish to keep up a semblance of friendship with me. Thank you, dear, for reminding me; it is not much, but it is just better than nothing. If it were not for that, I think that I could not bear it. And thank you, Pipchen dear.”
That little breakdown, momentary though it was, seemed to have done Carina good, for she spoke quite cheerfully in another minute.
“Aren’t you dying for tea, Gillian? I am. We will have it on the table by the fire in my own little room, and Pipchen will be nice and have it with us, and forget to sit upright and say ‘Ma’am’; and we will put the clock back and pretend it is the time four years ago when she and I used to have our tea together and read Dickens to teach me English, and I, impertinent little girl that I was, christened my dear governess Pipchen, after Miss Pipchen, of Dombey and Son.”
“That will be awfully—very nice,” Gill agreed heartily, and even Mademoiselle Pipignon smiled and appeared not to notice the “awfully,” though as a rule she was very severe on the slang which Gill had brought from the “High.”
The car slowed down before the steps of the Palace, as Gill finished speaking, and Carina got up, saying gaily: “Come, then, it is carried nem. con. that we will enjoy our tea and try quite to forget the Germans, and—”
She stopped short, and Gill, standing aside politely to let Mademoiselle Pipignon follow next after her royal pupil, suddenly forgot her manners and peered round Carina through the open door of the car. Then she saw what Carina saw.
Since the German occupation had so impoverished the town, the Grand-Duchess had personally gone into the matter of expenditure with various officials, and had desired that the rooms which were not in use should go unlit.
The rather grim old pile of the ancient castle, rechristened a Palace, had looked very dull and dismal now when darkness fell, for many a long week.
This evening it was blazing with lights, that shone out with their old splendour, looking dazzling after the gloom to which the eye had grown used.
Carina stepped down swiftly from the car, to meet an equerry, who came running down the steps.
“What is the meaning of all this illumination, Captain Esquenat? Have my orders been mistaken?”
The Captain looked at her with dismay in his face. Gillian could almost have fancied that his eyes were asking of her to say nothing more, or else to moderate her clear young carrying voice.
“Ma’am,” he said, bowing profoundly, “the lights were lit by the express direction of His Imperial Highness Prince Waldemar.”
Carina was all the Grand-Duchess as she swung round superbly upon the officer, her little head held high.
“I have yet to learn, sir, what His Imperial Highness Prince Waldemar has to do with the arrangements of my household.”
“Just this, little cousin, that he happens, by order of His Imperial Majesty the Kaiser, to be staying in this house of yours, and he’s hanged if he’ll stay in
the dark!”
The speaker was Prince Waldemar.
CHAPTER XXI
Under the Iron Hand
At eight o’clock that evening, Mademoiselle de Monti knocked at the door of Gill’s room and came in. She was very pale, Gill noticed, and her dark eyes smouldered.
“You are to dine to-night, child; we all are. It is needful to make as good an appearance as possible.”
Gill faced round upon her.
“What? For that Prussian pig? You don’t mean to say you want to make it nice for him? Did you hear the things that he was saying after tea?”
Gabrielle hushed her sharply. “Don’t be such a little stupid! Do you suppose anybody likes it? At least you haven’t the memories I have to swallow, and it’s worse, a hundred times worse, for our Grand-Duchess.”
“Of course it is.” Gill was compunctious, and eager to wipe out her offence. “Do you mean that I’ve to put on that new evening dress the Grand-Duchess gave me?”
“Most certainly. It is due to the Grand-Duchess to surround her with what state we can at such short notice.”
“A bit difficult, isn’t it,” Gill said, “now so many of her people are gone? Pity we can’t repeat that dodge they had in Dutch Bill’s time, over the defending of the Bass Rock, when they dressed up dummy figures and put them on the ramparts to impress the King’s soldiers and get good terms for themselves.”
Gabrielle de Monti smiled a little sadly. “Those were the good old days, and your Bass heroes had to do with gentlemen, not Germans.”
“What on earth has the Prince come for, do you suppose?” Gill grumbled, taking down her best dress from the wardrobe. “He won’t be a bit comfortable. You heard what he said about the lights, and the chef is fighting in France, and he doesn’t look the sort that’s got a soul to rise above discomfort. Do you know what he’s come for?”
Wanted, an English Girl Page 19