Wanted, an English Girl

by Moore, Dorothea

  “I might guess,” Mademoiselle de Monti told her dryly. “Now hurry, Gill; I’ll do your frock up, as Stephanie is helping Mademoiselle Pipignon.”

  “Is she going to dine too?” Gill asked. “Poor dear old thing, and she was so deadly sleepy. But I should think she could keep Prince Waldemar in order, if anybody can.”

  “Yes,” Mademoiselle de Monti answered, very slowly, and as though she were thinking about something else. “I should think she can do that—if anybody can. … Gillian!”

  Gill stood and stared at her, with her frock half on and half off. There had been something very odd about the tone in which Gabrielle de Monti had said “Gillian!”

  “I say, what is it?” she asked, feeling suddenly a little frightened, though she did not know why.

  Of course it was “a horrid nuisance,” as she put it in her own mind, to have Prince Waldemar quartered at the Palace; but surely he would never stay in a place where a chef was not, for more than a day or two at most.

  It had meant giving up the delightful cosy tea planned by Carina; there had been a stiff and formal one instead, in the shell drawing-room, with Mademoiselle Pipignon and Mademoiselle de Monti in attendance on the Grand-Duchess, and Gill herself reduced to insignificance, just a person who sat quietly in a corner and said nothing.

  Carina had not recalled to Prince Waldemar’s notice the fact that she had presented the English schoolgirl to him outside Wingeld’s three months ago, and Gill was thankful for that at least. It had been hard enough to sit silent, as befitted so unimportant a person in the presence of royalty, while Prince Waldemar sneered at England and the English, leaning back at his ease in the most comfortable chair the room afforded.

  Not that the conversation of His Imperial Highness exclusively concerned the events of the moment. He was graciously pleased to try to enliven the Grand-Duchess with stories of his incognito adventures behind the scenes at theatres and opera-houses. These adventures were far from edifying for the most part, and Gill had seen Carina crimson more than once, and make a most determined attempt to change the conversation.

  With the powerful help of Mademoiselle de Monti and Mademoiselle Pipignon, the Prince had at length been brought to see that his choice of topics was not altogether acceptable; but there was a contemptuous expression on his face, which seemed to say that if he gave in to a girl’s absurd fad for a moment it was only because it was not worth his while to make a fuss. Still he had given in; Gill thought it would be difficult even for a Prussian to do anything else when Pipchen fixed him with that stony stare. She could not quite understand Mademoiselle de Monti’s rather doubtful assent, nor the tone in which she said “Gillian!”

  “What is it, Gabrielle?” she repeated—Mademoiselle de Monti had given permission for the use of her Christian name.

  “Gillian, what I am going to say sounds very extraordinary,” Gabrielle said, “but I want you to realise that I am not speaking without very good reason indeed. Keep as much in the background as you can while Prince Waldemar is here; the more unimportant he considers you, the better.”

  “I don’t understand.” Gill was frankly puzzled. “First you say I’ve got to dine because of helping to make a good show for Prince Waldemar, and then you tell me to keep out of the way while he’s here.”

  The quarter-past struck. “Oh, hurry, Gillian!” Gabrielle urged. “Yes, of course, what I have said sounds contradictory and rather absurd, and I cannot explain myself now.”

  Gill, with a dressing-jacket round her shoulders, was brushing out her hair in hot haste. But she stopped to look at her friend, then.

  “Look here, I don’t want to know anything you don’t want to tell. But if I’m in a fog I’m pretty sure to muddle something.”

  Mademoiselle de Monti took Gillian’s white hair-ribbon and tied it in the beautiful French bow that no one else could make.

  “Do you realise that we all hold our offices at the pleasure of the Germans, and most particularly of this Prince?” she inquired bitterly. “Gillian, you are such a child still; I do not know how to make you understand. The Prince wishes to marry the Grand-Duchess, despite the difference in religion, and he is an entirely unscrupulous man. I want to ensure that one person at least who is staunch and true to her will run no risk of being sent away.”

  “Sent away! You? Mademoiselle Pipignon?” Gill could hardly believe her ears. “The Grand-Duchess would never stand that, and as to marrying Prince Waldemar …”

  No words seemed strong enough to express the utter impossibility of that proceeding. Gill just stopped.

  Mademoiselle de Monti went on, as though she had never been interrupted.

  “So you will see, my dear, why I want you to play as far as possible the part of a shy and stupid schoolgirl, who cannot be considered by Prince Waldemar to be in his way. By that means you may be able to do more service to the Grand-Duchess than you can guess, and she will stand terribly in need of loyal service.”

  “All right. I’ll remember,” Gill promised. “But do you really think that Prince Waldemar is going to have the face to bother her with a proposal now? What a frightful pity she isn’t engaged already to one of those princes that Dick told us about—it would be such a sell for that Prussian bounder if she said, ‘Thanks, I prefer to marry a gentleman, so I’m engaged to Prince … somebody or other.’ But I suppose the bother is that she isn’t in love with any of the suitable ones. Dick seemed to think it put her off when they were suitable. I should think it might, rather.”

  “Dick was extremely silly, and talked far too much, poor boy,” Mademoiselle de Monti said, beginning with severity and finishing with tenderness. “I very often wish that he had talked a little less nonsense to Carina, and then perhaps she would have been safely married by now. Your English way of allowing young girls to pick and choose for themselves is not practical and causes a great deal of trouble.”

  “I wish Captain Cartaret was a suitable person,” Gill remarked, cleaning her nails with a very hard brush and a vigour that made her companion shiver. “He is so awfully nice and …”

  Mademoiselle de Monti looked at the girl with attention.

  “So you have found something out, little Gillian?” she said, in an odd pleased voice, and Gill had an idea that she was on the edge of saying something else, something very important. Only at that moment a gong sounded from below, rolling and reverberating like thunder, and the two had to run, for etiquette imperatively demanded that all who had the honour of dining with her Grand-ducal Highness should be waiting in the shell drawing-room in two lines, to receive her when she came in.

  It was an etiquette in force on all state occasions, though not at the quiet little private dinners of ordinary life.

  Gill was always unlucky about her clothes; something was almost sure to happen when she was in a hurry. Something happened now. The lace in her sleeve caught on the handle of the door, as she rushed past, and tore.

  “What is it?” Gabrielle flung back, in answer to her exclamation of dismay. “Your sleeve—you must tuck it up now as best you can, and go to Stephanie to have it mended as soon as we come out from dinner.”

  There was nothing else that could be done just then, and Gill followed her friend down the grand staircase at break-neck speed, tucking the torn lace out of sight as she went.

  As it happened they need not have hurried so terrifically; for Carina and Prince Waldemar were both late.

  They came in together, with Mademoiselle Pipignon, still resolutely determined against giving way to sleepiness, behind them.

  Carina was wearing a gown of white velvet, which made her look taller and older than usual. She wore a wonderful rope of pearls, which had been brought into the family by the Norwegian ancestress who had bequeathed to the present Grand-Duchess her clear complexion, as well as the matchless pearls: and on her head was a small tiara, where leaves and flowers were all inlaid with mother-o’-pearl edged with tiny diamonds, set in the silver that backed the tiara.

 
; Lovely though the ornament was, Carina would hardly ever wear it, declaring that it hurt her head; Gillian wondered a little to see her in it to-night.

  Her eyes were very big and bright, and her face flushed; she looked lovely. Gill wondered if Prince Waldemar thought so too.

  He was very smart indeed in full-dress uniform, with orders crowded as thickly as though he were meant to be a walking advertisement of military distinction.

  He looked extremely pleased with himself, aggressively so, Gillian thought, as he followed Carina down between the two lines of her dinner guests, his pale eyes roving from one to another in cool, contemptuous scrutiny.

  Gill stood at the far end of one line, next to that Monsieur Anverra whose acquaintance she had made first on the ’phone. To her astonishment the Prince stopped just in front of her. She thought he must be intending to speak to Monsieur Anverra. But it was to the Grand-Duchess that he turned.

  “Didn’t I meet this young lady when I was last in Chardille, cousin?”

  The question gave Gill an unpleasant shock. She would not have wanted the Prince to remember her in any case, but after what Mademoiselle de Monti had said it was particularly disconcerting.

  However, the Grand-Duchess had the answering of the question, and she was quite calm and uninterested.

  “It is quite possible that you may have done so. Shall we lead the way to the dining-hall, my cousin?”

  Gillian hoped, as she went in to dinner rather shyly, her hand upon the arm of Monsieur Anverra, that so unimportant a subject as herself was disposed of, as far as the Prince was concerned.

  She had plenty of time for wondering if it were, during the long dinner; for Monsieur Anverra was dull as only an exceptionally clever and rising young man can be, and she was too young to find consolation in a meal which did its wonderfully effective best to conceal the absence of the French chef.

  What could be the danger threatening Carina to such an extent that she would be in need of an unimportant person like Gill herself? The people to deal with danger in an ordinary way would be Monsieur Dellotte and Monsieur Anverra, on the political side; and Mademoiselle Pipignon or Mademoiselle de Monti, in private life. Of course it would be very thrilling to be allowed to help ever so little, but she could not imagine that, even if danger threatened those staunch bulwarks, her help could count for a great deal.

  The sort of person to be really useful in an emergency like this would be a prince, one of those suitable princes whom Dick had said that Carina disapproved. If the Grand-Duchess were once safely married she would be out of the reach of Prince Waldemar for good and all. Only of course Carina could not marry someone just because he happened to be suitable.

  It was certainly a pity that suitability had to be so much considered where great people were concerned. If it had been for anybody except Carina, Gill would have liked the sound of that Prince Alexander, who appeared to be generally regarded as the right person for the Grand-Duchess. During her three months in Chardille she had heard about Prince Alexander as a great sportsman, who preferred shooting big game, in places where royalty doesn’t count, to any other pleasures in the world, and who never figured in illustrated papers, or was chattily boomed by “Daphne” or “Chloe” or “Cynthia” in ladies’ magazines.

  Carina gave the signal for withdrawal earlier than usual, and with reason, for Prince Waldemar’s manners were by no means improving as the evening went on, and the watchful footmen filled and refilled his glass. His aggressive pleasure in himself was turning to offensive familiarity. Monsieur Dellotte half rose to his feet more than once, with his eyebrows drawn together, but, as Gill guessed, it was difficult for him to know how to check a man who had the upper hand so completely.

  Waldemar objected strongly to the early withdrawal of his young hostess. “No, hang it all, Carina, you’re not going yet?”

  “Yes, I will leave you to your wine now, Cousin Waldemar,” Carina told him quietly.

  “No! no! you can’t go yet; you’re so devilish handsome when you look at one with your head up like that,” protested Waldemar; but he finished his protestation to Carina’s back, as she swept out, followed by her ladies. Gillian did not envy Monsieur Dellotte and the other gentlemen left to the task of entertaining the Prussian Prince.

  The moment that she had followed the last lady decorously into the great state drawing-room, which was in use to-night, Gillian asked leave to withdraw and mend her frock. The torn lace had been a great bother to her all through dinner.

  Carina nodded assent rather absently; she was not herself to-night, Gillian noticed, though, of course, she would keep up appearances before the guests who had been hastily bidden for the benefit of Prince Waldemar—Madame Dellotte, Madame de Trouville, and the Comtesse Vanissa, the widowed sister of Dick’s stepfather, who lived with Dick’s mother at her beautiful country house about twenty miles from Chardille.

  Dick’s mother, the Comtesse Vandercédon, had gone to England, taking Miss Berkeley with her, so soon as it was possible to procure passports that would take her through Belgium without being subjected to gross ill-treatment. As it was, Monsieur Dellotte was obliged to suppress the English name of her maiden days and of her first marriage, or she would have run very little chance of reaching England at all; and to make Miss Berkeley travel as her maid.

  Dick’s mother was so angry at the suppression that she nearly refused to use her passports at all, but the thought of her only boy, possibly wounded and needing her, proved too much for her pride, and she went to England; only first giving Gillian her address, and asking the girl to write and let her know how things were with the Grand-Duchess.

  Gillian had become very fond of Dick’s charming mother during those early days of the German occupation, when Monsieur Dellotte and the German officials were having arguments about passports, and did not wonder at Dick’s enthusiasm about her. She had been pleased at being asked to write; but she had in answer to her letters received one only from the Comtesse, and that a very short one, in which Dick’s mother asked rather anxiously for news, supplying on her part that Dick was in camp, training hard, and that his shooting was so good that they expected to send him out to the Front very shortly, when he hoped to be in the same regiment as Captain Cartaret.

  Gillian had written again, asking if the Comtesse had not received her first two letters, but had received no answer. It was soon after, that the Comtesse Vanissa found that a lonely house in the country was no safe residence for a lady while Germans occupied Insterburg, and came into Chardille, and from her Gill learned that few only out of the letters interchanged between her sister-in-law and herself had got through at all.

  The Comtesse Vanissa was speaking with Madame Dellotte about the lack of news as Gill left the room. In the streets, as she drove to the Palace, the Germans were announcing a great victory near Ypres, she said, something to do with the Prussian Guard; but the Press was so strictly censored that it was impossible to know the truth, and she on her part could get no English letters that gave any particulars as to the situation.

  Those words gave Gill an idea. Letters might not pass, it appeared, if they said anything that might in any way damage German prestige. Details as to the friendly occupation of Insterburg were suppressed as sternly as any information from England which might lead Insterburgers to suppose that the Germans were not spending all their time in totally annihilating British Army Corps. When one wanted to write one must keep to strictly private matters, and then the letter would probably go through.

  Gillian generally did things in rather a hurry, and she had been a good deal worried by appearing to fail in her promise to Dick’s mother. Also she wanted news of Dick.

  She left off mending her ruffle, and, leaving it still dangling loose, she snatched up her old writing-case, and, sitting on her bed, began to write in hot haste. She told Comtesse Vandercédon that she had written several times, but that the letters had not got through; that the Grand-Duchess was well and working at the Hospital; that sh
e herself was helping in the scullery department; and how was Dick, and had he managed to get into Captain Cartaret’s regiment, and was Captain Cartaret all right?

  She had got so far when there was a knock at her door, and she opened it to find a footman in the royal livery, but with a face that was quite strange to her.

  “Will Mademoiselle accompany me to the Round Library?” he said, in French that had an odd guttural sound about it.

  Gill shut up her writing-case in a hurry and followed the man. The Round Library—that must mean that Monsieur Dellotte or Monsieur Anverra wanted to talk to her about something.

  But they were neither the Premier nor Monsieur Anverra whom Gill found herself facing when the strange footman had opened the door of the Round Library; but Prince Waldemar, his aide-de-camp, Captain von Posen, and last, but by no means least, her old enemy the Baron.

  Gill’s first feeling was not fear but indignation that Germans should dare to send for her in that lordly way. Then the door was shut behind her by the footman, and quite suddenly she felt a little nervous.

  However, it would never do to show it, and she took the bull by the horns and spoke at once, regardless of etiquette.

  “I beg your Imperial Highness’s pardon. I thought I was sent for here, but see it was all a silly mistake. The footman is new, I think.”

  Prince Waldemar laughed more heartily than was polite to a person who had yet to see the joke, Gill thought resentfully. His amusement was echoed by his aide-de-camp, for whom she was beginning to feel quite an active dislike. Only the Baron preserved a sphinx-like impassivity of countenance.

  “It was very stupid of the footman, but I expect it was just his newness,” she explained, hot with annoyance at the ill-mannered laughter. “I beg your pardon for intruding, and …”

  She had her hand upon the door. “Come here to me and don’t be silly, Miss Gillian Courtney,” said the Prince. “You know well enough that you were sent for, though all that innocent surprise about the new footman was done uncommonly well, I will say that for you. New, of course he’s new—I fancy you will discover a good deal of newness among the staff, when you are permitted to rejoin the Grand-Duchess. Among other changes you will find that your charming friend, Mademoiselle de Monti, has resigned her post.”